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Series XXIII No. 9-10 

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 

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Historical and Political Science 

(Edited by H. B. Adams, 1882-1901) 

J. M. VINCENT 
J. H. HOLLANDER W. W. WILLOUGHBY 

Editors 



THE NAPOLEONIC EXILES IN AMERICA 

A STUDY IN" AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC HISTORY 
1 8 15 - 1 8 1 9 



BY 



JESSE S. REEVES, Ph. D. 

ALBERT SHAW LECTURER ON DIPLOMATIC HISTORY, 1905-6 



BALTIMORE 
THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 

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69 

THE NAPOLEONIC EXILES IN AMERICA 



Series XXIII No. 9-10 

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 

IN 

Historical and Political Science 

(Edited by H. B. Adams, 1882-1901) 

J. M. VINCENT 
J. H. HOLLANDER W. W. WILLOUGHBY 

Editors 



THE NAPOLEONIC EXILES IN AMERICA 

A STUDY IN AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC HISTORY 
18 15-1819 



BY 

JESSE S. REEVES, Ph. D. 

ALBERT SHAW LECTURER ON DIPLOMATIC HISTORY, 1905-6 



BALTIMORE 
THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 

PUBLISHED MONTHLY 

September-October, 1905 




i iwu OoDies deceived 

j JUL 26 IBOd 

/■/9cS 
a 

6>51 




Copyright, 1905, by 

THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 



Box* (gafftmou (preee 

THE FRIEDENWALD COMPANY 
BALTIMORE, MD. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Introductory g 

II. The Napoleonic Exiles in America 22 

III. The Society for the Cultivation of the Vine and 

Olive 34 

IV. The Napoleonic Confederation 44 

V. Monroe's Inquiry 63 

VI. Champ d'Asile 80 

VII. Conclusion 93 

Appendix 114 



PREFATORY NOTE 



This study of the Napoleonic Exiles in America centers 
about the unfortunate colonial enterprise called Champ 
d'Asile on the banks of the Trinity River in Texas. That 
undertaking had in itself no great historical importance, but 
the circumstances surrounding it throw, it is believed, a not 
uninteresting light upon the diplomatic situation after the 
downfall of Napoleon. The part of the narrative which 
relates to the " Napoleonic Confederation " was read at the 
meeting of the American Historical Association, in 1904, at 
Chicago. 

The writer takes this opportunity of expressing his obli- 
gations to Messrs. Andrew H. Allen and Pendleton King, 
of the Department of State, Washington, for permission to 
make use of manuscripts in their care. The Monroe Papers, 
formerly in the Bureau of Rolls and Library, Department 
of State, are now deposited in the Library of Congress. 
The writer also desires to thank Charles Francis Adams, 
Esq., for transcripts of certain letters of John Quincy Adams. 

Richmond, Indiana, June 1, 1905. 



THE 

NAPOLEONIC EXILES IN AMERICA 

A STUDY IN AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC HISTORY 
1815-1819 



CHAPTER I. 
Introductory. 

In the third part of the triology called " Les Celibataires," 
known variously as " Un Menage de Garcon " and as " La 
Rambouilleuse," Balzac has developed perhaps with more 
art than logic the character of Philippe Bridau. The novel- 
ist prefaced his work with a dedication to Charles Nodier 
in which he characterized " Un Menage de Garcon " as a 
book in which " the finger of God, so often called chance, 
takes the place of human justice." The relentless course of 
the unhappy story left but little to chance. Philippe Bri- 
dau, the central male figure, appears first as a young and 
restless soldier of the Empire, then after Waterloo as a blus- 
tering and selfish ne'er-do-well, who taxed his mother's 
devotion and his brother's generosity to support the shams 
of a worthless existence. As the Napoleonic soldier grows 
older, the ne'er-do-well develops into the crafty scoundrel. 
Such a sudden and unaccounted-for metamorphosis as this 
has been characterized as a tour de force which a second- 
rate novelist might employ, but from which the true artist 
should abstain. 1 

The discussion of the change in the character of Philippe 
Bridau is a matter of literary criticism which is beside the 
purpose here. When the Napoleonic wars were over, Phil- 
ippe Bridau, like many of his compatriots, lounged about 



1 George Saintsbury in his introduction to The Bachelor's Estab- 
lishment. 



10 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



[532 



Paris, boasted of his military exploits under the Great Em- 
porer, and sponged a living from his mother's narrow means. 
Work as a civilian the soldier would not, nor would he serve 
a foreign power, for " a Frenchman was too proud of his 
own to lead any foreign columns ; besides, Napoleon might 
come back again." Bridau is, of course, but an individual 
created in -fiction to impersonate an historical type. 

What to do with the imperial officers was a problem which 
the idea of Champ d'Asile was designed to solve. Balzac 
laid bare the sordid motives which aimed at the removal 
from Paris of the remnant of the Old Guard. It was a 
gigantic fraud, he said, in which those who paraded a sym- 
pathy for the devoted followers of the prisoner of Saint 
Helena and embezzled the funds raised in behalf of the old 
soldiers, joined hands with the partisans of the restored 
Bourbons in " sending away the glorious remnant of the 
French Army." According to the novelist, the idea of the 
occupation of Texas by the soldiers of the Imperial army 
was no doubt a splendid one, " but it was the men who were 
found wanting rather than the conditions, since Texas is 
now (1843) a republican state of great promise. The ex- 
periment made under the Restoration proved emphatically 
that the interests of the Liberals were purely selfish and in 
no sense national, aiming at power and nothing else. Nei- 
ther the material, the place, the idea, nor the good-will was 
lacking, only the money and the support of that hypocriti- 
cal (Liberal) party.''' 

In these few words Balzac sketched the purposes and re- 
sults of the plan of founding the last French colony within 
what is now the territory of the L nited States, an attempt no 
more successful though less tragic in its outcome than that 
first French colony in America, which Ribaut and Laudon- 
nietre founded and Menendez erased. Doubtless the French 
novelist has given correctly the contemporary Parisian opin- 
ion concerning the plan of Champ d'Asile. Granted that its 
patrons were insincere, and that probably the funds raised to 
assist the undertaking were misused and embezzled, yet, in 



533] 



Introductory. 



ii 



contradiction to the view of Balzac, it may be said that suit- 
able conditions were lacking, as well as appropriate men. 

America, which meant freedom from the working of the 
political vengeance of the Restoration, was the natural goal 
of the proscribed soldiers of the Empire. Thither it had 
been thought the great Emperor himself would find an 
asylum after the disaster of Waterloo and the second abdi- 
cation of June 22, 1815. Just how far Napoleon devel- 
oped a mere wish into a settled determination to go to Amer- 
ica is by no means clear. Lord Rosebery has commented 
upon the positive physical degeneration which showed itself 
in Bonaparte after his return from Elba. " The Napoleon 
who returned in March, 181 5, was very different from the 
Napoleon who had left in April, 1814." 2 " Everything," 
said Lamartine, " during the period of the Hundred Days 
was marked with symptoms of decay and blindness, except 
his march on Paris, the most intrepid and the most per- 
sonal of all his campaigns." 3 After the final struggle, " he 
retreats to Malmaison, where he is practically a prisoner. 
He will not move ; he will not give an order ; he sits reading 
novels. He will arrange neither for resistance nor for 
flight. He is induced to offer his services as general to the 
provisional government. The reply he receives is a direc- 
tion to leave the country. He obeys without a word and 
leaves in a quarter of an hour." * 

Even before his abdication the Emperor spoke of Amer- 
ica as a final retreat where he could live with dignity. The 
day after that event he talked with Lavallette, and the latter 
records that the Emperor turned the discourse on the re- 
treat he ought to choose, and spoke of the United States. 
" I rejected the idea without reflection and with a degree of 
vehemence that surprised him. ' Why not America ? ' he 
asked. I answered ' Because Moreau retired there.' He 
heard it without any apparent ill-humor, but I have no doubt 



2 Rosebery, Napoleon, the Last Phase. 

3 Lamartine, History of the Restoration, Book 30, section 1. 

4 Napoleon, the Last Phase, 123. 



12 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [534 



that it must have made an unfavorable impression upon his 
mind. I strongly urged his choosing England for his 
asylum." 6 Afterwards, at Malmaison, Napoleon again dis- 
cussed his plans for leaving France. " For the past three 
days he had solicited the provisional government to place a 
frigate at his disposal, with which he might proceed to 
America. It had been promised him ; he was even pressed 
to set off, but he wanted to be the bearer of an order to the 
captain to convey him to the United States, but that order 
did not arrive. We all felt that the delay of a single hour 
might put his freedom in jeopardy." 6 

By the 29th of June the agent of the provisional govern- 
ment, General Becker, arrived at Malmaison to escort Na- 
poleon to the coast. Fouche, who had tricked the Emperor 
at every turn, now officially directed Napoleon's movements, 
and his sincerity of purpose in announcing that Napoleon 
would be taken to the United States in a French frigate 
may be questioned if not denied. The resolutions of the 
Commission of Government, signed by Fouche, under date 
of June 26, directed that while two frigates should be pre- 
pared at Rochefort to convey " Napoleon Bonaparte " to 
the United States, " the frigates should not leave Rochefort 
until the safe arrival of the passports." The intention of 
the provisional government, therefore, is not to be judged 
by the offer of the ships, but by its failure to furnish pass- 
ports. Las Cases (no good authority, to be sure) said that 
these were promised, but if such a promise were made at 
all, it meant nothing, and its fulfillment depended not upon 
Fouche but upon the allies. 7 A second order from Fouche 
to General Becker directed that Napoleon should leave for 
Rochefort at once, there to embark upon the frigate with- 
out waiting for the passports. 8 

"Bourrienne, Memoirs (Eng. Trans.), IV, 226. 
6 Lavallette, Memoirs (Eng. Trans.), II, 197. 

7 Las Cases, Memorial of St. Helena, I, pp. 15-26. 

8 Rose (Napoleon, II, 476) is of the opinion that the Provisional 
Government acted honestly toward Napoleon. 



535] 



Introductory. 



13 



Napoleon left Malmaison June 29 and was at Rochefort 
July 3. Rosebery says that it seems clear that, had the 
Emperor acted with promptitude, he had reasonable chances 
of escaping to America, but at Rochefort he showed the 
same indecision, the same unconsciousness of the value of 
every moment, as at Malmaison, just after his abdication. 9 
This conclusion is open to question, for the strong block- 
ade of English cruisers patrolling the coast forbade any at- 
tempt at escape unless by means of disguises and stratagem, 
though Captain Maitland, of the Bellerophon, admitted that 
the best chance of escape was by attempting to run the 
blockade in one of the French frigates. Such an admission 
after the fact, when Napoleon was safe in English hands, 
proves nothing more than that the possibility of eluding the 
British was slight indeed. Many ruses were discussed 
while Napoleon awaited his passports at Rochefort from 
July 3 to July 8, and at the Isle d'Aix until July 15, when 
he embarked upon the Bellerophon. On the 10th, Las 
Cases visited the British cruisers for the purpose of ascer- 
taining if the passes to proceed to the United States prom- 
ised them by the Provisional Government had been received. 
" The answer was that they had not, but that the matter 
would be instantly referred to the commander-in-chief. 
Having stated the supposition of the Emperor's setting sail 
under flag of truce, it was replied that they would be at- 
tacked. We then spoke of his passage in a neutral ship 
and were told in reply that all neutrals would be strictly ex- 
amined and perhaps carried into an English port; but we 
were recommended to proceed to England and it was as- 
serted that in that country we should have no ill-usage to 
fear." On the nth, upon the same authority, "all the out- 
lets were blockaded by English ships of war, and the Em- 
peror seemed extremely uncertain as to what plan he should 
pursue. Neutral vessels and chasse-marees, manned by 
young naval officers, were suggested for his conveyance; 



9 Rosebery, Napoleon, the Last Phase. 



14 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [536 



propositions also continued to be made from the interior." 
The next day Napoleon left the frigates " in consequence 
of the commandant's having refused to sail, whether from 
weakness of character, or owing to his having received fresh 
orders from the provisional government, is not known. 
Many were of the opinion that the attempt might be made 
with some probability of success, but it must be allowed that 
the winds still continued unfavorable." 10 

To all the plans proposed by which he might evade his 
enemies Napoleon remained indifferent and apathetic until 
the 13th, when, after a visit from his brother Joseph, who 
was then at Rochefort with a passport issued in the name 
of Bouchard (said to have been obtained by Jackson, the 
American charge at Paris 10a ), Napoleon was, Las Cases says, 
"on the point of embarking in one of the chasse-marees; 
two sailed having on board a part of his luggage and sev- 
eral of his attendants," but as before, Napoleon refused to 
adopt any plan of escape whereby disguise was necessary. 
That such was beneath the dignity of the Emperor is suffi- 
cient reason for this but as contributing to this attitude 
must be added the break-down of his physical energy and 
his belief that something might be gained by trusting to the 
generosity of the British. 11 

Among the many accounts of Napoleon's plans for escape 
was one in which the name of Stephen Girard appears. Ac- 



10 Las Cases, I, pp. 15-26. 

1<>a Henry Jackson, secretary of legation, acted as charge from the 
departure of Wm. H. Crawford in April, 1815, until the arrival of 
Albert Gallatin in July, 1816. 

11 Rose (Napoleon, II, 466) combatting the assertion that Napoleon 
was physically broken down during the Waterloo campaign, upon 
the ground that if such were the case the battle of Waterloo would 
deserve little notice, collects evidence to prove that there had been 
no radical change in Napoleon's health after his return from Elba. 
The array of evidence seems conclusive, although from its professed 
purpose it has the appearance of a bit of special pleading. While 
Rose admits that it is not easy to gauge Napoleon's feelings after 
the second abdication, it is asserted that he was certainly not a 
prey to torpor and to dumb despair. "His brain still clutched 
eagerly at public affairs as if unable to realize that they had slipped 
beyond his control." II, 476. 



537] 



Introductory. 



15 



cording to the story which was widely circulated in the 
newspapers, a Colonel King, of Somerset county, Maryland, 
sent a ship to La Rochelle to bring Napoleon to America. 
The Emperor was to have been brought to Accomac county, 
Virginia, and Girard was believed to have selected a country 
place for him there. The story doubtless began in idle 
gossip, but it grew into a tradition that upon the report that 
Napoleon had escaped to Virginia, Colonel King ordered 
out the local militia, of which he was commander, to march 
to the Virginia line, some fifteen miles distant, there to greet 
the distinguished guest. 

Napoleon's idea of seeking an asylum in America was 
soon communicated to the other members of his family. 
From the Chateau de Neuilly, whither he had retired after 
the abdication, Lucien wrote to his sister Pauline, June 26, 
18 1 5 : " You will have known of the recent disaster to the 
Emperor, who has just abdicated in favor of his son. He 
will depart for the United States of America, where all of 
us will join him. I shall try to join my family at Rome in 
order to conduct them to America." 12 Similarly, Cardinal 
Fesch wrote to Pauline : " Lucien left the day before yes- 
terday for London in order to obtain passports for the rest 
of his family. Joseph will await his passports as did 

Jerome I foresee that the United States will be our 

final destination, but I think that you should remain in 
Italy." 13 

Joseph alone succeeded in obtaining passports permitting 
him to leave France. He followed Napoleon to the coast 
and urged his brother to use them, feeling certain that 
owing to the strong physical resemblance between them, the 
younger would be mistaken for the elder brother. The 
plan received as little consideration by Napoleon as did all 
the rest. 



12 Jung, Lucien Bonaparte et ses Memoires, III, 360. 

13 Ibid., 361. Jung states that it was Lucien's intention to join 
his brother at Rochefort and to embark with him to the United 
States. 



i6 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [538 

Adolph Mailliard, a son of the Louis Mailliard who was 
Joseph's secretary, has given a report of the last interview 
between Napoleon and Joseph, based upon a narrative 
which he claimed to have heard more than once not only 
from the lips of his father, but from Joseph Bonaparte as 
well. Before Napoleon finally embarked in the Bellero- 
phon, Joseph visited him to make his farewells. He found 
the Emperor in bed, ill and mentally depressed. Joseph 
offered him his quarters in the brig Commerce. " I will 
take your place," said Joseph, " and will appear to be ill in 
your room for two or three days. No one will know any- 
thing of your departure until you are far away. I shall 
run no risk and you will never again have so good an oppor- 
tunity. Everything is ready." Napoleon was much af- 
fected, but refused the offer. Upon leaving the Emperor, 
Joseph said: "To-night I shall send you a messenger in 
whom I have perfect confidence. Give him your final an- 
swer." About midnight he sent Louis Mailliard, who was 
received by the Emperor alone. Napoleon first asked about 
the details of the undertaking and then said : " Everything 
is well arranged. You will succeed without difficulty. Say 
to King Joseph that I have considered his proposition thor- 
oughly. I cannot accept it, for it would be a flight. I 
cannot leave my brave officers who are so devoted to me. 
My brother may leave, but in my position I cannot do so. 
Tell him to leave at once. He will arrive safely." 14 

Joseph remained at Rochefort until the Emperor had 
surrendered himself to Captain Maitland, of the Bellero- 
phon, thereby " throwing himself upon the generosity of the 
British nation." General Lallemand, who had exhausted 
every plan for Napoleon's escape, asked that he might share 
his exile. This was refused. For two years thereafter 
Lallemand wandered about the world until, as will be seen 

14 Bertin, Joseph Bonaparte en Amerique, 44. The story may 
have been built upon Montholon's account, long after the event. 
Neither Gourgaud nor Bertrand mentions the incident. See Rose, 
Napoleon, II, 479. It seems that quarters in the " Commerce " were 
not engaged until after Napoleon had left upon the Bellerophon. 



539] 



Introductory. 



17 



later, he rallied about himself the soldiers of the Old Guard 
who had fled to America. 

For several days after the Bellerophon had sailed, Joseph 
remained at Rochefort while he made arrangements for 
his departure for the United States. An American brig of 
two hundred tons, the Commerce, of Charleston, South 
Carolina, Captain Misservey, lay at Bordeaux about to re- 
turn home in ballast. This vessel was chartered for eighteen 
thousand francs and its captain was ordered to drop down 
the Gironde to Royan, there to take on board provisions 
and a small party formerly connected with the Imperial 
Court. On the 24th of July, Joseph and those of his suite 
who had obtained passports boarded the Commerce without 
interference from the Bourbon officials in command at 
Royan. On the 25th the Commerce sailed. Before the 
day was over, the vessel was overhauled by the British 
man-of-war Bacchus. After a short interview with Cap- 
tain Misservey, the British officers left without noticing the 
passengers, of whose identity all seemed to be ignorant. The 
Bacchus signalled the brig to proceed, but the next day the 
frigate Endymion stopped the Commerce. This time the 
British officers made an examination with enough care as 
to cause alarm among the passengers. The ex-king of 
Spain kept his cabin, apparently much distressed with sea- 
sickness, while the British officers examined the passports. 
As all the papers appeared to be in good form, the Com- 
merce was again permitted to continue on her way. The 
French shores and the British cruisers guarding the coast 
left behind, the Commerce made straight for New York. 
There it dropped anchor August 28, and Joseph Bonaparte, 
formerly king of Spain, and now calling himself Count de 
Survilliers, was safe from the hands of the restored Bour- 
bons. 15 The ease with which he made his escape from 
France leads to the belief that little effort was made to in- 
tercept him by the allies. 



"Narrative of James Caret in Bertin, 12. 



18 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [54° 

It did not take long for the news to spread over New 
York that Joseph Bonaparte had succeeded in making his 
escape from France and was to become a resident of the 
United States. The reception given him was entirely hos- 
pitable and Henry Clay, who had just returned from Europe 
as one of the peace commissioners, was the first American 
of distinction who greeted him soon after his arrival. 16 

What attitude should the Count de Survilliers adopt to- 
wards the people and the government of the United States ? 
Not a few Americans held to the opinion so universal on 
the other side of the Atlantic that any member of the Bona- 
parte family was an enemy to peace and a constant menace 
to the welfare of the country in which he happened to be. 
The more general view was the more truly American. 
America had always been a refuge for all who sought to 
escape from the tyranny and oppression of the Old World, 
and why should it not be for the elder brother of Napoleon, 
a man believed to be pacific by nature and only dangerous 
as a willing instrument in the Emperor's hands? 

No doubt the Count de Survilliers was disposed, in so 
far as human nature permitted, calmly to submit to the de- 
crees of fate, and, accepting the downfall of Napoleon as 
an accomplished fact, to settle down as a private gentleman 
in America. Some difficulty at once arose, however, from 
his conception of the duties of an unofficial member of 
American society. 

After a rest of a few days in New York, the Count set out 
for Washington, accompanied by Commodore Lewis, to 
whom he had disclosed his identity, with the avowed pur- 
pose of meeting President Madison. 17 With what for that 
time and place was a large retinue, the party arrived in 
Baltimore September 14 and left the same day for Wash- 
ington. It was perhaps fortunate for all concerned that 
the President and most of his Cabinet were absent from the 



16 Bertin, 8. Niles's Register, 1815, IX, 44. 

"Dallas to Madison, September 11, 1815, Dallas's Dallas, 447. 



54i] 



Introductory. 



19 



capital, for learning this, the Count turned back at Ellicott's 
Mills, on the highway between Baltimore and Washington, 
and returned by way of York and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 
to New York. 

Soon after the Count de Survilliers appeared in New York, 
President Madison had been informed of his determination 
to visit Washington and to seek an interview, at which time, 
though he would be introduced under the title of Count de 
Survilliers, he hoped to be received as Joseph Bonaparte. 18 
Madison, who was then at his country seat, Montpelier, 
wrote to Monroe dwelling upon the manifest impropriety 
of such a proceeding, involving him in a clandestine trans- 
action. To prevent this, steps were taken to divert the 
party from its purpose should it arrive at the capital. Madi- 
son directed Attorney-General Rush, who was then at Wash- 
ington, to see that.no application should be made for pre- 
sentation to him. 19 " The anxiety," wrote Madison to Mon- 
roe, " of Joseph Bonaparte to be incog, for the present at 
least makes it the more extraordinary that he should under- 
take a journey which could not fail to excite curiosity and 
multiply the chances of discovery. Commodore Lewis has 
doubtless been misled into his inconsiderate agency by a be- 
nevolent sympathy; but he ought at least to have obtained 
a previous sanction to it from some quarter or other." 20 

Rush, who succeeded in shunting the unwelcome party 
from Washington, laid the entire blame of the affair upon 
the Commodore, " whose honor," Madison had said, " Joseph 
Bonaparte had inferred from his military symbols " when 
they first met in New York. Lewis gave as a reason for 
the change in route that not until they reached Ellicott's 
Mills had they learned with certainty that the President and 
the heads of departments were absent from Washington. 

18 Madison to Monroe, September 12, 1815, MS. Monroe Papers, 
Library of Congress; Madison to Dallas, September 15, 1815, Dal- 
las's Dallas, 445. 

19 Madison to Rush, September 15, 1815, Dallas's Dallas, 445. 

20 Madison to Monroe, September 12, 1815, MS. Monroe Papers, 
Library of Congress. 



20 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



[542 



" These excuses," Rush informed Madison, 21 " must all origi- 
nate with himself and be the price of his own indiscretion. 
From me he had no hint to make them." The Attorney- 
General, sharing the popular suspicion of every motive of 
the Bonapartes, hinted at a possible political intrigue behind 
the apparent plans of the Count de Survilliers. " The meas- 
ure in which Lewis embarked," he declared to the President, 
" was abrupt and indecorous in a very high degree, and I 
confess it will sometimes cross my suspicions that it may 
have been propelled by other machinery than the ostensible, 
and that, too, without the ostensible agents themselves hav- 
ing been fully or rightly aware of it. It is not possible that 
such a personage would have been a week in New York 
without fixing the eye and perhaps engaging the reflections 
of more principal men than those who figured as his avowed 
patrons. But of this I have no right to do more than think." 

Referring to the rumor that the Count might proceed to 
Montpelier, in case he failed to see Madison at Washington, 
Rush continued : " To have come, at any time, to the seat 
of your public residence with the ulterior view of a personal 
visit, without a previous sanction through the usual chan- 
nels, might have been thought not entirely respectful if pru- 
dent. But so to invade the sanctity of your domestic re- 
treat, really, sir, looks to me, independent of all other 
siderations, as scarcely less than an outrage. ... I remem- 
ber that when Talleyrand was in Philadelphia, as ex-bishop 
of Autun, General Washington declined being visited by 
him, although he made known a wish to wait on him." It 
is probable that Joseph Bonaparte knew that Madison and 
his Cabinet were unwilling to receive him, for he made no 
further attempt to see the President, but returned to New 
York. 22 

Early in 1816 the Count de Survilliers leased the Bingham 
estate on the Schuylkill, known as Lansdowne, and resided 



21 Rush to Madison, September 17, 1815, MS. Monroe Papers, Li- 
brary of Congress ; see also, Bertin, op. cit, 10. 

22 Rush to Madison, September 17, 1815. 



543] 



Introductory. 



21 



there for about a year, but as Lansdowne was too near Phila- 
delphia and lacked seclusion, a change of residence was 
found to be desirable. Point Breeze, a farm of about two 
hundred acres, near Bordentown, New Jersey, belonging to 
the Sayre estate, was purchased during the summer of 1816 
and there Joseph Bonaparte made his home until 1832, when 
he returned to Europe. Successive purchases of adjoining 
land enlarged Point Breeze to a place of more than eighteen 
hundred acres. Upon it the ex-king of Spain lived as a 
gentleman farmer. During the sixteen years of his sojourn 
in New Jersey his home was a center of generous hospitality 
for all the French exiles. Especially during the first part of 
his term of residence there Point Breeze was a veritable 
bureau de bienfaisance for the refugees of the Napoleonic 
regime. 33 



23 Joseph Bonaparte's life in America is fully described by M. 
Georges Bertin, Joseph Bonaparte en Amerique, Paris, 1893; see 
also The Bonaparte Park, by E. M. Woodward, Trenton, N. J., 
1879; "Bordentown and the Bonapartes," by J. B. Gilder in Scrib- 
ner's Monthly, Volume 21 ; The Napoleon Dynasty, by " The Berke- 
ley Men," N. Y., 1856. 



CHAPTER II. 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 

The fortunes of the officers, who had declared for Napo- 
leon on his return from Elba and fought for him until the 
final disaster, fell into the hands of Fouche, whose double 
dealing led to the belief that Napoleon might escape to 
America. Thanks to that inborn trait which his character 
invariably showed, Fouche openly condemned the active sym- 
pathizers with the Second Empire and secretly assisted them 
to escape. The presence of the Napoleonic exiles in Amer- 
ica, whether for good or ill, may be credited to the sinuous 
policy of the despised Duke of Otranto. 

It is said that Louis XVIII had already determined upon 
the dismissal of Fouche when he ordered him, as minister of 
police, to prepare lists of proscription. Thus Fouche was 
made to bear the odium attaching to the policy of political 
revenge. These lists, as first submitted to the king and 
council, contained about one hundred names : " one part 
was chosen by the public clamor, the other by chance. In 
this first choice Fouche had not shown any personal weak- 
ness : all of his accomplices of the Hundred Days, Bonapart- 
ists, Orleanists, ministers, colleagues, representatives of 
his policy, equals, and subordinates, generals, marshals, 
agents of his police, and executors of his orders were com- 
prised in it. He had sacrificed himself liberally; there was 
lacking his own name only." 1 

For days the names upon the list were balloted upon. 
Now this, now that name was struck out. The list was re- 
duced to eighty names, then to fifty-nine. When the king 



1 Lamartine, History of the Restoration, Book 30, section 40. 



545] The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



23 



and council decided that a name should remain, Fouche, per- 
haps with the king's acquiescence, warned some, saw others, 
provided passports and money, until it was only the " most 
obstinate or the most foolhardy who fell subsequently into 
the hands of the police." 2 

After most of those whose names yet remained upon the 
list had been assisted in making their escape, Louis pro- 
claimed the ordinance of proscription dated July 24, 181 5, 
" Desirous of conciliating the interests of our subjects, the 
dignity of our crown, and the tranquility of Europe, we or- 
der, first, that the generals and officers who have betrayed 
the king before the 23rd of March, or who have attacked 
France and the government by force of arms, and those, 
who by violence have possessed themselves of power, shall 
be seized and brought before competent courts-martial in 
their respective divisions, viz., Ney, Labedoyere, Lallemand 
senior, Lallemand junior, Drouet d'Erlon, Lefebvre-Des- 
nouettes, Ameil, Brayer, Gilly, Mouton-Duvernet, Grouchy, 
Clausel, Laborde, Debeille, Bertrand, Drouot, Cambronne, 
Lavallette, and Rovigo." 3 The second article of the same 
ordinance ordered thirty-nine individuals to quit Paris within 
three days and to remain in the country under the surveil- 
lance of Fouche until the chambers should either expel them 
from France or else order them to appear for trial. Among 
the number were Vandamme, Real, Dirot, Cluis, and Gamier 
de Saintes. These lists were thereupon declared closed with 
the names designated. "They can never be extended to 
others for any cause or pretext whatever, otherwise than in 
the forms and according to the constitutional laws from 
which deviation is made only in this special case." * 

Among those thus proscribed, as has been seen, was Mar- 
shal Grouchy, who with his two sons, Colonels Alphonse 
and Victor Grouchy, arrived in Baltimore in January, 1816, 
all of them under assumed names. The animadversions 



2 Ibid. . 

3 Ibid., Book 30, section 41. 

4 Ibid. 



24 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



[546 



upon Grouchy's actions at Waterloo, which Gourgaud soon 
published in London, were echoed by many of Napoleon's 
officers who congregated in and about Philadelphia. Grouchy 
was blamed for the disaster, an opinion in which Napoleon 
concurred, for according to him, it was largely due to the 
imbecility of Grouchy that Waterloo was lost. 6 While in 
America Grouchy wrote a reply to Gourgaud and published 
it in Philadelphia. 6 A copy of the Marshal's defense was 
sent to Jefferson, to whom he had previously forwarded a 
letter of introduction from Lafayette. 

The sage of Monticello, on account of his long residence 
in France, his numerous friendships there, and his univer- 
sally known sympathy with French ideas, was naturally a 
character of the highest interest and attraction to the French 
emigrants. In the fall of 18 17 Grouchy started on a pil- 
grimage to Monticello. He went as far south as Wilming- 
ton, Delaware, where he was the guest of the Duponts. His 
plan of an excursion into Virginia was given up on account 
of the illness of one of his sons, and he wrote to Jefferson 
from Wilmington how much he regretted not being able to 
take this trip which he had been promising himself ever since 
his arrival in America. He determined, however, to make 
the journey in the following spring. Then, as he wrote, he 
would tell Jefferson " how much I congratulate myself on 
dwelling in your interesting country ; how proud I am, and 
how thankful for the honorable hospitality which has been 
bestowed upon me here, and that if anything can lessen the 
bitterness with which a distant exile overwhelms me, and 
the state of servitude and degradation of my native land, it 
is to see yours, happy, powerful, free, and respected, and all 
through institutions founded upon the very same principles 



Though apparently Joseph Bonaparte bore Grouchy no ill-will. 
See Wilson's Life and Letters of Fitz-Greene Halleck, 519. 

6 Observations sur la relation de la Campagne de 1815 par le Gen- 
eral Gourgaud, pp. 67, Philadelphia, 1818. Grouchy also published 
a small pamphlet in 1820 from Philadelphia: Doutes sur l'authen- 
ticite des memoires historiques attributes a Napoleon. 



547] 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



25 



for the establishment of which I have so often needlessly 
shed my blood." 7 

Writing from Monticello, Jefferson replied : " Your name 
has been too well known in the history of the times, and your 
merit too much acknowledged by all, not to promise me great 
pleasure in making your personal acquaintance. If, too, the 
trouble of such a journey could be compensated by anything 
which the country between us could offer to your curiosity, 
it would save me the regret which I could not fail to feel 
were I to suppose myself the whole object of the journey. 
In this last case I would certainly think myself sufficiently 
honored by the written expressions of respect just now re- 
ceived, and should postpone the pleasure of receiving them 
personally to the unreasonable trouble which such an object 
would impose on you. As you flatter me with taking the 
journey in the spring, I am in hopes the face of our country 
at that season will still better reward the labor of the under- 
taking." 8 

The arrival of one after another of the Bonapartist follow- 
ing aroused no little feeling of alarm in the heart of Hyde de 
Neuville, the representative at Washington of the restored 
Bourbon dynasty. 9 What with the American colonies of 
Spain in serious revolt, the persistent rumors of attempts to 
rescue Napoleon from the rock of St. Helena, and the crowd 
of Napoleonic officers " recruiting, scattering money, and 
organizing secret expeditions," all these things formed a 
welter of suspicion in De Neuville's mind that the United 
States was to be the base of operations by which South 



7 Grouchy to Jefferson, October 20, 1817, MS. Jefferson Papers, 
Bureau of Rolls and Library, Department of State. The powder- 
mill of the Du Ponts' at Brandywine exploded March 19, 1818, 
killing thirty persons and wounding ten. Marshal Grouchy and his 
two sons were present and aided in attempting to save the Du Pont 
residence. 

8 Jefferson to Grouchy, November 2, 1817, MS. Jefferson Papers, 
Department of State. 

9 De Neuville had been in the United States in 1806 and lived 
for a time at New Brunswick, New Jersey, where General Moreau 
visited him. Memoires et Souvenirs du Baron Hyde de Neuville. 



26 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



[548 



America would be severed from Spain with Napoleon, lib- 
erated from St. Helena, as its emperor. "As to South Amer- 
ica," he wrote to the Due de Richelieu, January 10, 18 17, 
" I persist in thinking that only one man, Bonaparte, could 
operate there a great revolution. It appears that Joseph has 
been persuaded to dream of being King of the Indies." 19 
Every attention paid the Napoleonic emigrants became to 
him a matter of serious concern upon which he fully reported 
to his chief. At a Fourth of July celebration at Baltimore 
in 181 6, the postmaster of that city referred in hardly compli- 
mentary terms to the restored Bourbon government. De 
Neuville promptly called upon Monroe with the request that 
the postmaster be dismissed from his post and made to 
apologize for the insult to his master. Monroe refused to 
consider the matter upon the ground that the United States 
had no authority to limit the unofficial utterances of its ser- 
vants, and that they were at liberty to discuss matters of 
foreign politics. 11 

Shortly after this occurrence, De Neuville's susceptibilities 
were again wounded by some remarks made at a public din- 
ner at New York, at which Grouchy was referred to as 
" Marshal Grouchy." Such a title, said De Neuville, was 
an offense to his government. Acting upon his report of the 
affair, the French minister of foreign affairs asked Gallatin, 
then at Paris as the American envoy, for the removal of 
Skinner, the Baltimore postmaster, as a reparation suffi- 
ciently satisfactory to France. Gallatin could not make De 
Richelieu believe that no affront had been intended by the 
United States. The functions of the French consul at Balti- 
more were suspended as a retaliation. " No public agent," 
De Richelieu said to Gallatin, " could be maintained in a 
town where His Majesty had been so publicly insulted." Lest 
this method of retaliation might not have the desired effect, 



10 Memoires et Souvenirs, II, 267. 

11 Monroe to Gallatin, September 10, 1816, MS. Archives, Bureau 
of Indexes and Archives, Department of State. See Wharton's In- 
ternational Law Digest, section 389. 



549] 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



27 



Gallatin was further informed that by the refusal to dismiss 
Skinner, the government of Louis XVIII would be disposed 
to be slow about taking any steps looking toward the pay- 
ment of the spoliation claims. 12 

Among the officers of Napoleon's army who had arrived 
in the United States and upon whom the Bourbon represen- 
tative kept a close eye were the brothers Lallemand. The 
elder, Charles Francois Antoine Lallemand, was born at 
Metz about 1774 and entered military service in 1792. Serv- 
ing through the campaigns of the Revolution, he became 
Junot's aide-de-camp in Egypt. After the disastrous San 
Domingo expedition in 1802 he was back again in the Napo- 
leonic army, and after Jena became a colonel. In 181 1 he 
appears as a general of brigade and as such he served con- 
tinuously until the abdication of Fontainebleau. Before the 
Hundred Days he quickly accepted service under the re- 
stored monarchy as commander of the Department of l'Aisne, 
and just as quickly began to conspire against the existing 
government. With his younger brother, Henri Dominique 
Lallemand, and General Lefebvre-Desnouettes, he formed a 
plot to seize the arsenal of La Fere. The scheme failed and 
the brothers were arrested with their co-conspirator and im- 
prisoned. Napoleon's entry into Paris after his return from 
Elba set them at liberty and they at once entered with zeal 
into the service of the Emperor. At Waterloo the elder 
Lallemand showed unusual courage as commander of the 
chasseurs of the guard. Lie was in the last army and fol- 
lowed it beyond the Loire. The younger Lallemand com- 
manded the artillery of the guard at Waterloo, having pre- 
viously received the rank of general of division. After the 
second abdication, the elder, denied the privilege of fol- 
lowing Napoleon into exile, was taken by the British to 
Malta and finally liberated. From Malta he roamed over 
eastern Europe and unsuccessfully offered his services to 
Russia, Turkey, and Egypt. The younger brother managed 

"Gallatin to Monroe, November 21, 1816, and January 30, 1817, 
Gallatin's Works, II, 9, 22. 



28 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [550 

to escape from France under an assumed name, going first 
to London and thence to the United States, where Charles 
finally met him. Both had been condemned to death in ab- 
sentia by a conseil de guerre in August, 18 15, as the insti- 
gators of the conspiracy of La Fere. None of Napoleon's 
officers showed him greater devotion than did the elder of 
the Lallemands. O'Meara records the Emperor's estimate 
of him : " On my return from Elba he declared in my favor 
at a moment of the greatest peril to himself. He has a great 
deal of resolution and is capable as an organizer. There are 
few men who can better conduct a hazardous enterprise. 
II a le feu sacre" 13 

Lefebvre-Desnouettes, who had risen from a sub-lieuten- 
ancy to the rank of general of division at the time of the 
abdication of Fontainebleau, accepted service under the res- 
toration only to pronounce in favor of Napoleon on the 
return from Elba. Upon the discovery of the La Fere plot, 
he fled to the headquarters of Rigaud, commanding the divi- 
sion of Seine-et-Marne, where he awaited Napoleon's arrival. 
At W aterloo, where as lieutenant-general he commanded the 
lancers and chasseurs a cheval, he is said to have fought 
with the " rage of desperation." The restored Bourbon 
government condemned him to death, and, following the 
example of Joseph Bonaparte, he fled to America. 

Closely associated with Lefebvre-Desnouettes was General 
Rigaud, who had sheltered him just before the Hundred 
Days. This general, who had served from the beginning of 
the Napoleonic wars, first as commander of the 28th Dra- 
goons and afterwards as general of brigade, appears before 
the Hundred Days as a general of division. L T pon Napol- 
eon's return he abandoned the restored government and com- 
manded the French troops at Chalons, where he was taken 
prisoner and carried to Frankfort. Escaping thence to 
America, he reappears in 18 17 as one of the company of 
Napoleon's officers who had escaped the penalties of a death 
sentence. 



13 Damas-Hinard, Dictionnaire-Napoleon, 2me edition, 297. 



55 1 ] The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 29 

These four, the brothers Lallemand, Lefebvre-Desnou- 
ettes, and Rigaud, at once became the leading spirits among 
the exiles. Associated with them were General Bertrand 
Clausel, Count of the Empire and Marshal of France, Gen- 
eral Vandamme, who commanded the Third Corps during 
the Hundred Days ; Count Real, the historiographer of the 
Republic and prefect of police under Napoleon, together 
with Colonels Galabert, Schultz, Combes, Jordan (an aide- 
de-camp of the Emperor's), Latapie, Vorster, Douarche, 
Charrasin, Taillade, Defourni, and many others of less rank. 
Several of them appeared upon the lists of those proscribed 
by Fouche. Others had left France fearing the vengeance 
of the Bourbon restoration known as the " White Terror." 

Lafayette acted as the means of introduction of another 
exile in addition to Grouchy, whose tastes were more like 
those of the Sage of Monticello than were the Marshal's. 
Joseph Lakanal was originally a priest and a professor in 
Ariege in the Pyrenees. In 1792 he became a member of 
the National Convention and in the next year his name ap- 
pears as one who not only voted for the death of Louis XVI 
but consistently followed the plans of the Revolution in do- 
ing all he could to blot out all traces of the old regime. In 
matters of education he continued to have a prominent place 
and was the author of the law establishing primary and 
central schools all over France. From 1795 to 1797 he was 
a member of the Council of Five Hundred. Opposed to the 
coup d'etat of the 18th Brumaire, he was removed from his 
office as one of the executive commissaires of the govern- 
ment, and retired to a professorship in the Ecole Centrale at 
Paris to be called in 1804, having again gained the support 
of Napoleon, to the stewardship of the Lycee Bonaparte. 
On the organization of the Institut National, afterwards the 
Institut de France, Lakanal was the first member to be 
elected, and with the Abbe Sieyes drew up the regulations 
of that body. In 1809 he was made inspector-general of 
weights and measures and aided in extending the use of the 
metric system, which had been made compulsory by the law 



30 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [552 

of 1801. At the second restoration he was proscribed as a 
regicide, and early in 1816 came to the United States. 

Knowing Jefferson's interest in everything scientific, espe- 
cially when coming from a French source, Lafayette gave 
Lakanal a cordial letter of introduction to Jefferson, in 
which he said, writing in English : " The bearer of these lines 
is Mr. Lakanal, Member of the French Institute, Officer of 
the University and Inspector-general of the new Metrical 
System, who abandons those functions and a handsome treat- 
ment to become a settler in the State of Kentucky. He has 
for several years been in the Representative Assemblies of 
France, and is going to seek in the U. S. Liberty, Security, 
and Happiness. I cannot procure for him a greater gratifi- 
cation than by introducing him to you, and I know you will 
find a pleasure in favouring him with your advices and 
recommendations for the part of the Country where he 
means to settle himself and family." 14 Thouin, of the Jardin 
du Roi, with whom Jefferson kept up a correspondence upon 
agricultural and horticultural subjects, also gave Lakanal a 
note to Jefferson : " Permit me to present to you one of our 
learned confreres, M. Lakanal, member of the department 
of history and ancient literature of our Institute, a man to 
be recommended by his morality as well as by his learning, 
to whom our scientific institutions owe many debts. He 
leaves our old Europe, in which civilization seems to be 
retrograding, to settle, with several of his friends, in young 
America, which is called to such high destinies, and where 
society already offers to its happy citizens, liberty, tran- 
quility and good fortune." 15 

Lakanal left France with enough money to buy a farm on 
which to settle with his family and several companions. It 
was Lafayette's hope, as has been seen, that Lakanal would 
seek Jefferson's advice before he settled on his estate in this 



"Lafayette to Jefferson, October 28, 1815, MS. Jefferson Papers, 
Department of State. 

15 Thouin to Jefferson, October 18, 1815, MS. Jefferson Papers, 
Department of State. 



553] 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



3i 



country. It appears, however, that he did not present his 
letters of introduction, but soon after his arrival in the 
United States went to Gallatin county, Kentucky, on the 
Ohio river, nearly opposite the French settlement at Vevay, 
Indiana. 16 Having settled on this farm, which he may have 
bargained for prior to leaving France, he wrote to Jefferson, 
June 1, 1816, enclosing the letters from Lafayette and 
Thouin. That a learned member of the French Institute 
should settle down in the wilds of Kentucky was strange 
enough, but his plan of diverting himself from the tedium of 
his wilderness home was almost ludicrous. 

His letter to Jefferson was as follows : 17 

" Your Excellency : — I have the honor to address you a 
letter which I had hoped to have the inestimable benefit of 
presenting to you personally ; but events over which I have 
had no control have changed my plans. Here I am upon the 
banks of the Ohio, upon an estate which I have just pur- 
chased: Gallatin County, in the vicinity of the French col- 
ony of Vevay. In this pleasant retreat I shall divide my 
time between the cultivation of my lands and that of letters. 
I purpose writing the history of the United States, for which 
I have been collecting materials for the past ten years. The 
spectacle of a free people supporting with obedience the 
salutary yoke of law will lessen the grief which I feel in 
being exiled from my country. She would be happy if your 
pacific genius had guided her destinies. The ambition of a 
single man has brought the enraged nations upon us. My 
country, prostrate, but struck by the wisdom of your admin- 
istration, wishes for such as you of the new world to raise 
herself from her ruins. I hope that in writing your history 
and that of your predecessors, more or less illustrious, the 
picture will prove the painter and that, sustained by the 



16 No deed to Lakanal appears of record in Gallatin county, Ken- 
tucky. 

"Lakanal to Jefferson, June 1, 1816, MS. Madison Papers, Depart- 
ment of State. In the Calendar of the Correspondence of James 
Madison, issued as a Bulletin of the Bureau of Rolls and Library, 
Department of State, this letter appears as from Lakanal to Madison. 



32 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [554 



beauty of my subject rather than by my own ability, I shall 
be able to say with a poet of antiquity, at the close of my 
work, ' Exegi monumentum aere perennius.' 

" Deign, your Excellency, to receive the tender and re- 
spectful homage of your very humble and very obedient 
servant, " Lakanal, 

of the Institute of France and of the Legion of Honor. 
" Gallatin Contry (sic) par Vevay, Indian-contry (sic), June 
1, 1816." 

Jefferson, whose mental endowment did not include a keen 
sense of humor, gravely wrote in reply the following very 
characteristic letter : 18 

" Monticello, July 30. 16 

"Sir:— 

"Your favor of June 1, with the letters it covered, was 
received a few days ago only ; and had your worth been less 
known, the testimony of my friend Lafayette would have 
been a sufficient passport to my esteem and services. The 
affliction of such a change of scene as that of Paris for the 
banks of the Ohio, I can well conceive. But the wise man is 
at home everywhere, and the mind of the philosopher never 
wants occupation. I weep indeed for your country, because, 
altho' it has sinned much (for we impute of necessity to a 
whole nation the wrongs of which it permits an individual to 
make it the instrument) , yet its sufferings are beyond its sins 
and their excesses are now become crimes in those commit- 
ting them. We revolt against them the more too, when we 
see a nation equally guilty wielding the scourge, instead of 
writhing under its infliction at the same stake. But this can- 
not last. There is a day of judgment for that nation, and of 
resurrection for yours. My greatest fear is of premature 
efforts. It is an affliction the less for you, that you now see 
them from a safe shore; for to remain amidst sufferings 
which we cannot succour is useless pain. 



"Jefferson to Lakanal, July 30, 1816, MS. Jefferson Papers, De- 
partment of State. 



555] The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 33 

" I am happy that in your retirement the subject to which 
you propose to avert your mind is an interesting one to us. 
We have not as yet a good history of our country, since its 
regenerated government. Marshall's is a mere party diatribe, 
and Botta's only as good as could have been expected from 
such a distance. I fear your distance from the depositories 
of authentic materials will give you trouble. It may, perhaps, 
oblige you at times to travel in quest of them. Should your 
researches bring you into this section of the country and 
anything here be worth your notice, we shall be glad to re- 
ceive you as a guest at Monticello and to communicate freely 
anything possessed here. With every wish for your hap- 
piness in the new situation in which you are placed, I salute 
you with perfect esteem and respect. 

" Thos. Jefferson. 
" M. Lakanal of the Institute of France and Legion of 
Honor." 

We may suspect that there was something slightly disin- 
geneous in the reference by Lakanal to Napoleon as one 
" whose ambition had brought upon France the enraged na- 
tions of Europe," for Lakanal had received his highest 
honors from the hands of the Emperor from 1804 to the 
restoration of the Bourbons. His reference to the pacific 
genius of Jefferson shows that he knew what Jefferson's 
ideas were concerning Napoleon. But Jefferson, never los- 
ing an opportunity to express an opinion on the relations be- 
tween Great Britain and France, replied in the same tone. 
Subsequent events showed that Lakanal was at a still later 
date in sympathy with the Bonapartist idea, when with Na- 
poleon banished to Saint Helena, most Americans considered 
his regime to be a closed chapter in French history. 



CHAPTER III. 



The Society for the Cultivation of the Vine and 

Olive. 

The fears which Madison and his cabinet showed on the 
arrival of Joseph Bonaparte in America were soon replaced 
in the public mind by expressions of sympathy for the vic- 
tims of the Bourbon restoration. The era of good feeling, 
which began towards the close of Madison's administration 
was plainly not confined to political life. A deeply grounded 
optimism pervaded all branches of thought, political, relig- 
ious, and social. To grant aid to the Napoleonic exiles, 
whom fancy depicted as tired of strife and eager to win an 
honest livelihood under the peaceful system of the new world, 
was but one of the many evidences that Americans gen- 
erally were conscious of the isolation of their country from 
the sources of foreign discord. Full of a benevolent sym- 
pathy, they were ready to succor those whom the wars of 
Europe had ruined and exiled. The cordial greeting of 
Clay to the ex-king of Spain was thus only a manifestation 
of the same feeling of Americans toward the unfortunate, 
which was afterwards shown in expressions of good will to 
struggling Greece and to revolted Spanish America. Clay 
but voiced the sentiment of the people. 

Disliked as Napoleon was by many Americans on ac- 
count of his attitude towards the United States in the first 
decade of the century, that feeling was now more than coun- 
terbalanced by disgust at the reactionary policy of Bourbon 
France. Many of the exiles were unquestionably in impov- 
erished circumstances, and in order to help them, as well as 
to insure their becoming permanent settlers in the United 
States, a scheme was devised by which, upon the organiza- 
tion of the exiles into an agricultural society, they might 



557] Society for Cultivation of Vine and Olive. 35 

receive a large grant of land from the government in a part 
of the country having a climate as nearly as possible like 
that of southern France. Upon this grant they might enter 
into the cultivation of the vine and olive, two branches of 
agricultural activity which needed encouragement, or rather 
a start, for the cultivation of the olive had not as yet been 
attempted. 

The company was organized in the fall of 1816 at Phila- 
delphia and at first it was thought that it would be able to 
undertake a settlement without the assistance of the govern- 
ment. The month of December, 18 16, was spent in pros- 
pecting for a suitable location for the colony. A number 
went from Philadelphia west to Pittsburg and thence down 
the Ohio in search of a favorable situation, but nothing met 
their fancy. They were advised while in Kentucky to make 
a settlement on the Tombigbee in the Mississippi Territory, 
and to petition Congress for a grant in the tract recently 
acquired by treaty from the Creek Indians. 

Through the exertions of Colonel Nicholas Simon Par- 
mehtier, the secretary of the company, the refugees suc- 
ceeded in obtaining a grant from Congress of four contigu- 
ous townships, each six miles square, for the cultivation of 
the vine and olive. The terms of the grant were very liberal ; 
indeed, the land was almost a gift. According to the law 
which passed Congress, March 3, 1817, 1 the Secretary of the 
Treasury was authorized to contract for the sale of the four 
townships at the rate of two dollars per acre with an agent 
to be named and duly authorized by the French society, the 
whole to be paid for within fourteen years. The stipulations 
on the part of the government were that there should be at 
least one settler for each half section, two hundred and 
eighty-eight in all, and that no one member should hold 
more than six hundred and forty acres. The final grants 
giving clear title could be obtained only by furnishing proof 
that actual settlement had been made and that the settler had 



1 Statutes at Large, III, 374. 



36 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [558 



fulfilled certain conditions named by the Secretary of the 
Treasury. One condition to which the emigrants strenu- 
ously objected was that the title to the whole property 
should be given the agent only upon the fulfillment of the 
contract by each settler. They desired, and with some show 
of justice, that titles should be granted in severalty to each 
upon proof given that the other conditions were complied 
with. Had this been conceded, the history of the settlement 
on the Tombigbee might have been different. Crawford's 
condition was devised to prevent speculation in the lands, 
but it had no such effect. 2 

The headquarters of the society were at Philadelphia and 
there the shares were subscribed for and the allotments made. 
The required number of applicants was soon received and 
the organization of the society perfected. General Charles 
Lallemand was elected president, a Mr. Martin second vice- 
president, and Nicholas S. Parmentier secretary. William 
Lee, formerly American consul at Bordeaux and afterwards 
second auditor of the Treasury, was originally chosen as 
first vice-president, but he afterwards vacated in favor of 
Charles Villars, who was the general agent of the company. 
The title of the organization was the French Agricultural 
and Manufacturing Society, but it was known variously as 
the Society for the Cultivation of the Vine and Olive, the 
French Emigrant Association, and the Tombigbee Associa- 
tion. Among the names which appear in the first list of 
shareholders were Marshal Grouchy and his sons, Generals 
Charles and Henri Lallemand, Clausel, and Lefebvre-Des- 
nouettes, together with Colonels Galabert, Schultz, Combe, 
Jordan, Vorster, Douarche, Charrasin, Taillade, and De- 
fourni. Lakanal was also one of the shareholders, and 



2 Crawford to Meigs, November 10, 1817, American State Papers, 
Public Lands, III, 387; Message of President Monroe, March 16, 
1818; Richardson's Messages, II, 30, giving information in com- 
pliance with Senate resolution of December 31, 1817, as to proceed- 
ings under the act of March 3, 1817. Crawford to Monroe, Feb- 
ruary 19, 1818, stated that allotments to three hundred and fifty 
immigrants had been approved by the President. 



559] Society for Cultivation of Vine and Olive. 37 

although not upon the list, Count Real and General Van- 
damme were interested in the movement. 3 

Before the filing of the petition to Congress, the society, 
through its officers, applied to Jefferson for a plan of gov- 
ernment for the projected settlement. In a letter written 
from Philadelphia in January, 18 17, Martin and Parmentier 
asked Jefferson to trace for them " the basis of a social pact 
for the local regulations " of the society. Jefferson declined 
to do so, and writing to William Lee, he gave his reasons 
therefor. " No one/' he wrote, " can be more sensible than 
I am of the honor of their confidence in me, so flatteringly 
manifested in this resolution; and certainly no one can feel 
stronger dispositions than myself to be useful to them, as 
w T ell in return for this great mark of respect, as from feelings 
for the situation of strangers, forced by the misfortunes of 
their native country to seek another by adoption, so distant, 
and so different from that in all its circumstances. I com- 
miserate the hardships they have to encounter, and equally 
applaud the resolution with which they meet them, as well 
as the principles proposed for their government. That their 
emigration may be for the happiness of their descendants, I 
can but believe ; but from the knowledge I have of the coun- 
try they have left, and its state of social intercourse and com- 
fort, their own personal happiness will undergo severe trial. 
The laws however which are to effect this must flow from 
their own habits, their own feelings, and the resources of 
their own minds. No stranger to these could possibly pro- 
pose regulations adapted to them. Every people have their 
own particular habits, ways of thinking, manners, etc., which 
have grown up with them from their infancy, are become a 
part of their nature, and to which the regulations which are 
to make them happy must be accommodated. No member 
of a foreign country can have a sufficient sympathy with 
these. The institutions of Lycurgus, for example, would not 
have suited Athens, nor those of Solon Lacedaemon. The 



8 American State Papers, Public Lands, III, 396. 



3§ 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [560 



organizations of Locke were impracticable for Carolina, and 
those of Rousseau and Mably for Poland. 

" Turning inwardly on myself from these eminent illustra- 
tions of the truth of my observations, I feel all the presump- 
tion it would manifest should I undertake to do what this 
respectable society is alone qualified to do suitably for itself. 
There are some preliminary questions too which are par- 
ticularly for their own consideration. Is it proposed that 
this shall be a separate state? Or a county of a state? Or 
a mere voluntary association, as those of the Quakers, Dun- 
kars, Menonists? A separate state it cannot be, because 
from the tract it asks, it would not be of more than 20 miles 
square, and in establishing new states, regard is had to a 
certain degree of equality in size. If it is to be a county of 
a state, it cannot be governed by its own laws, but must be 
subject to those of the state of which it is a part. If merely 
a voluntary association, the submission of its members will 
be merely voluntary also ; as no act of coercion would be per- 
mitted by the general law. These considerations must con- 
trol the society, and themselves alone can modify their own 
intentions and wishes to them. With this apology for de- 
clining a task to which I am so unequal, I pray them to be 
assured of my sincere wishes for their success and hap- 
piness." 4 

Although, as has been said, many of the shareholders were 
dissatisfied with the conditions imposed by Secretary Craw- 
ford, the society decided to occupy the grant and to make a 
settlement. The first installment of about one hundred and 
fifty left Philadelphia in December, 18 17, but the greater 
number of the shareholders did not follow for some months. 
Chartering a schooner, the McDonough, a large body of the 
emigrants sailed from Philadelphia late in the following 
April. They took with them an assortment of vines and 
olive plants, which they had promised to cultivate on the 
lands given them by the government. 

4 Jefferson to William Lee, January 1, 1817. MS. Jefferson Papers, 
Department of State. 



561] Society for Cultivation of Vine and Olive. 39 

The McDonough reached the entrance of Mobile Bay in 
safety, but when opposite Point Bowyer a heavy gale arose, 
driving the schooner on shore. Help arrived from Fort 
Bowyer and all the passengers and cargo were saved. At 
Mobile, whence the company proceeded, they were tendered 
a public dinner and welcomed to Alabama. A government 
barge was placed at their disposal, and with the cargo on 
board it ascended the Tombigbee River to Fort Stoddart. 
In July the emigrants were at a place called White Bluffs, 
and there they decided to lay out a town. A name had been 
selected for the new city by Count Real and the streets of 
" Demopolis " were surveyed and log cabins erected before 
the settlers knew whether or not the side of the " City of the 
People " was within the government grant. When the gov- 
ernment surveyors arrived, they found that Demopolis was 
outside the limits of the grant. Demopolis was thereupon 
deserted and the settlers moved inland, where they laid out a 
new town, calling it Aigleville. The original town site was 
finally sold by the government to an American company for 
fifty-two dollars per acre and is now a town of about two 
thousand inhabitants in the northern part of Marengo coun- 
ty, Alabama. Both the name of the town and that of the 
county preserve the recollection of the settlement made by 
the soldiers of Napoleon. 5 

That these French colonists should begin their settlement 
by trying to establish a town throws an interesting light upon 
the ideas they had in regard to an agricultural colony. True 
to their traditions their interests centered around the town. 
Unlike the Anglo-Saxon pioneer, who looked first to the 
clearing of the land and was willing to bear the discomforts 
of isolation whilst making a place for himself in the wilder- 
ness, the French turned their attention first of all to the 
organization of a town that their social proclivities might 



6 "The Bonapartists in Alabama," by Anne Bozeman Lyon in the 
Gulf States Historical Magazine, March, 1903. Pickett, History of 
Alabama, II, 386-399. "The French Grant in Alabama," by Gaius 
Whitfield, Jr., in Ala. Hist. Soc. Trans. Volume IV. 



4 o 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



[562 



have a common center. In the location of Aigleville they 
were as unlucky as in the selection of a site for Demopolis, 
for, like the earlier choice, the second settlement was outside 
the confines of the government grant. 

According to the terms of the law making the grant, the 
Secretary of the Treasury entered into a contract with the 
society, stipulating the methods of allotment and the plan by 
which the lands were to be cultivated. This contract was 
not signed until January, 18 19, by which time many of the 
shareholders had left Alabama and forfeited their claims. 
The contract provided that the legal number of settlements 
should be made within three years. Within fourteen years 
ten acres in each one hundred and sixty were to be cleared 
and under cultivation. One acre in each quarter section was 
to be planted in vines within seven years. The same length 
of time was given in which to plant five hundred olive trees, 
unless " it be proven to the President that olives cannot be 
grown." The settlements and allotments already made were 
confirmed. Other French emigrants might be admitted 
upon the same conditions, but actual settlement was made in 
all cases an indispensable condition. 6 

The idea was not new, that French officers, many of them 



6 American State Papers, Public Lands, III, 396, 435, 537. A reso- 
lution of the Senate of April 17, 1820, referred to the Secretary of 
the Treasury the memorial of John M. Chapron, which asked that 
the terms of the original grant be so changed that each settler might 
have a good title independent of the others. Crawford reported, 
April 18, 1820, that he still believed such a change inexpedient, as 
the "principal object of the grant was not that a small number of 
tracts of land should be cultivated in vines and olives, but that the 
whole tract should be settled by persons understanding the culture 
of those plants." Charles Villars asked, December 12. 1821, that 
the law be modified, reporting that there were then eighty-one actual 
planters, 327 persons all told, with 1100 acres in full cultivation, 
including 10,000 vines, and that the company had spent from first 
to last about $160,000. " In spite of our enemies," he said, " we have 
done more work than could reasonably be expected, considering the 
many losses we have sustained, to repair to the spot and after the 
beginning of our settlements the want of communication in a rough 
and hardly explored country, the greatest part of which has been 
overflowed nine months of the year and the sickness which has vis- 
ited us and deprives yet many families of their lands." 



563] Society for Cultivation of Vine and Olive. 41 

of noble birth, should attempt an agricultural colony in the 
wilderness of America. Every precedent, however, begin- 
ning with that of Ribaut in Florida, was one of failure. It 
could not be otherwise ; to beat swords into ploughshares 
was possible of accomplishment by a citizen militia, but not 
by professional soldiers used to command and to the order of 
a military system. "Actual settlement " as farmers in the 
wilds of Alabama was not merely a visionary enterprise on 
the part of many of the old generals. Success in the under- 
taking was no less than a physical impossibility. The veter- 
ans of the greatest series of campaigns which modern Europe 
had ever seen were not the philosophers who could, as Jef- 
ferson wrote to Lakanal, " be at home everywhere," clearing 
stumps and tending grapevines, thousands of miles away 
from the center of all their interests. 

The more important members of the company quickly real- 
ized the hopelessness of the undertaking and the impossi- 
bility of living as simple farmers on small tracts of land. 
Only one of them made any extensive settlement, and 
that was General Lefebvre-Desnouettes, the comrade of the 
Lallemands in the conspiracy of La Fere. He was by far 
the wealthiest of the settlers on the Tombigbee and fre- 
quently received money from Europe with which to improve 
his estate. His holding of about five hundred acres was the 
best in the colony, and in addition to a good-sized house in 
which he lived, he built a log cabin which he called his " sanc- 
tuary." Here, according to tradition, he had a large bronze 
statue of Napoleon. Around the base of the figure were the 
swords and pistols which the general had taken in battle and 
around the walls were draped the colors of the Emperor. 

Other men who had some note as actors in the events of 
French history from the Revolution to Waterloo were for a 
time in and about the Tombigbee settlement. Peniers, a 
member of the Convention which had voted for the death of 
Louis XVI, had a small place just outside the government 
tract. In the crowd of exiles which gathered about Aigle- 
ville were Colonel Nicholas Raoul, who had accompanied 



42 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [564 



Napoleon to Elba, and Colonel Cluis, an aide to Marshal 
Lefebvre. Peniers was afterwards appointed a sub-agent to 
the Seminoles and went to Florida, where he died in 1823. 
Raoul took up the more peaceful career of a ferryman, and 
in this capacity he ran a ferryboat at French Creek, near 
Demopolis. Tiring of this life, he finally went to Mexico 
and is last heard of as an officer in the revolutionist army. 
Cluis became a tavern keeper at Greensboro, Alabama, where 
he died. 7 

Clausel and Henri Lallemand made settlements through 
their lessees only. The other officers, the Grouchys, Charles 
Lallemand, Galabert, Jordan, Defourni and the rest, were re- 
ported to the government as having made " no performance," 
and their claims lapsed. 8 Lakanal's name was similarly re- 
ported, for though he had given up his Kentucky retreat, he 
made no settlement in the grant of the company. The asso- 
ciation, after various petitions to the government to have the 
terms of the contract changed, finally disbanded and the 
colonists were scattered. 

The history of the French settlers on the Tombigbee is but 
one record of misfortune. So many mistakes had been made 
in surveying the government grant that no one was sure of 
his title, even if the stipulations as to the cultivation and 
clearing of the lands were adhered to. Efforts to cultivate 
vines resulted only in failure. When they were finally made 
to grow at all, the grapes were poor and yielded a miserable 
quality of wine, and the fruit matured during the heat of 
summer. The cultivation of the olive was also a signal fail- 
ure. In the face of all these discouragements several set- 
tlers continued to occupy their small tracts and to eke out a 
precarious existence in the wilderness. Those who could do 
so abandoned their holdings and sought homes in Mobile. 
There they formed a small circle which tradition says was 
of unusual cultivation and refinement. 



7 Pickett, op. cit, passim.; Lyon and Whitfield, op. cit. 

8 Public Lands, III, 396. 



565] Society for Cultivation of Vine and Olive. 43 

Before the summer of 1818 was over, Philadelphia was 
again the center of attraction for many of the members of 
the association. Joseph Bonaparte was the magnet which 
drew the Bonapartist following thither. Upon his financial 
assistance they could rely when in need and it was a source 
of charity .of which some of them were not slow to take ad- 
vantage. 

Charles Lallemand, in writing to his brother Henri, said : 
"" I have more ambition than can be gratified by the colony 
upon the Tombigbee." 9 It is certain that he had little sym- 
pathy with the bucolic purposes of the society for the culti- 
vation of the vine and olive. While, as has been said, he 
was a shareholder in the company, it is doubtful if he ever 
visited the Tombigbee, for while the settlers were consider- 
ing a place for a settlement, Lallemand was in New Orleans 
purchasing supplies for his own colony in Texas. 



9 Lyon, op. cit. 



CHAPTER IV. 
The Napoleonic Confederation. 

In one way only could the dreams of the restoration of 
Napoleon cease, and that was by the death of the prisoner of 
Saint Helena. So long as he remained alive his former ad- 
herents, who had been driven out of France by the edicts of 
the Restoration, continued to plan schemes for the rescue of 
the Emperor. Each month showed that the Bourbons were 
more secure on the throne of France and the utter impos- 
sibility of winning back that country to a Napoleonic regime 
even if the head of the family were liberated. Those of the 
Old Guard who were in America talked of and planned for 
Napoleon's escape. With him were bound up all their hopes. 
No scheme was too absurd to be gravely discussed by his 
old followers, if only it concerned the rescue of their chief or 
the restoration of the fortunes of his family. 

As has been said, Joseph, alone of Napoleon's brothers, 
succeeded in making his escape to the United States. Lu- 
cien had intended joining Napoleon at Rochefort, but he 
and his family were so closely watched that escape was im- 
possible. He remained under the suspicious eyes of the 
European powers and continually excited their fears until 
Napoleon's death. While at Rome in 1817 under the pro- 
tection of the Pope, Lucien was reported to be in constant 
communication with America, and fearing that a new Bona- 
partist intrigue was on foot, the French ambassador wrote to 
the Papal secretary of state, asking that a closer watch be 
kept upon Lucien and his family because " his remarks, opin- 
ions, and schemes left no doubt as to his intentions." Lucien 
continually denied that he was engaged in any plan whatever 
for the political restoration of his family, and very probably 



567] The Napoleonic Confederation. 45 

his connection with any such intrigue went no further than 
the mere knowledge that such schemes existed. 1 

It was otherwise with Joseph, the Count de Survilliers. He 
was surrounded by a crowd of Napoleon's old generals. The 
very freedom of the United States gave these exiles full op- 
portunity for the discussion of every plan for the escape of 
Napoleon and the rehabilitation of his fortunes. That the 
Emperor was alive was a sufficient inspiration to them for 
intrigue, even if the schemes when developed showed only 
the madness of desperation. Europe could not then be the 
scene of another return. The only field for such effort 
was to be America. 

The Count de Survilliers was a very different personage 
from Joseph, King of Spain and the Indies. The American 
dominions of Spain, as they were in the time of the Bona- 
parte king, had changed greatly in the three years since the 
battle of Vittoria. The very fact that the throne of the 
mother country had been made the plaything of Napoleon 
gave additional force to the growth of revolutionary ideas 
in Spanish America. On this account and thanks also to 
the reactionary policy of the Camarilla, Spanish power was 
openly defied from the La Plata to the Isthmus. At the 
time of the Bonapartist occupation of the throne of Spain, 
the sympathizers with Napoleon's policy, or Josefinos, as 
they were called, had no following in the Spanish colonies 
in America. 

Each colony saw the organization of juntas to govern in 
the name of the displaced Ferdinand VII. By these means 
the colonies got an idea of the weakness of the mother coun- 
try, imbibed some notions of self-government, and even ex- 
perienced some of the benefits of having a government on 
this side of the Atlantic. The very loyalty of the juntas 
served in the end to nourish the disloyalty of all the Spanish- 
American provinces. In Mexico revolutionary ideas had at 
that time a little less currency owing to the policy of the 



1 Jung, Lucien Bonaparte et ses Memoires, III, 372, 399. 



46 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [568 

viceroy, Apodaca, one of the most energetic of Spanish offi- 
cials. He had so prudently managed the affairs of the vice- 
royalty that less discontent appeared there than in the other 
dominions of the king of Spain. Apodaca's four years of 
power represented a period of comparative quiet. 

Shortly after the usurpation of the Spanish throne by the 
Bonapartes, Portugal, refusing to join in the continental 
system, was occupied by the French army under Junot. The 
royal family thereupon fled over-sea to Brazil. Why should 
not Joseph Bonaparte, the king of Spain and the Indies, 
driven from his throne in Europe, set up his standard in the 
new world, there to reign until an opportunity offered to re- 
turn to Europe? The idea was quixotic, perhaps mad, but 
there is no doubt that such a plan existed, even if the ex- 
king himself cannot be shown to have given it his active 
support and sympathy. 

The idea of the establishment of Joseph Bonaparte on the 
throne of Mexico as King of Spain and the Indies seemed 
to Americans so absurd whenever it was discussed, that the 
editor of Niles's Register did not hesitate to denounce as 
" manufactured " a letter in his own columns, written from 
London in July, 18 16, about the time the Count de Survilliers 
was negotiating for the purchase of Point Breeze, at Bor- 
dentown, New Jersey. The correspondent declared that a 
conspiracy was under way to place the Count upon the throne 
of Mexico and that the body of generals, who had followed 
him to America, were willing to unite their means with the 
defeated insurgents in Mexico " to drive the Spaniards from 
their colonies, and to establish a mighty empire on the shores 
of the Pacific." Joseph Bonaparte, it was said, though unam- 
bitious, had been powerfully worked upon by the arguments 
of the exiled French officers, who were " uneasy at the state 
of inaction to which they had been reduced." " Nothing 
now prevented their immediate engagement in this enterprise 
but the refusal, on the part of the government of the United 
States, to undertake any ostensible co-operation." This 
statement was so ridiculous that it was difficult to take any 



569] The Napoleonic Confederation. 



47 



part of the letter seriously, and the editor seemed to be 
justified in scoffing at the whole story. The correspondent's 
source of information he declared to be from America. 2 

For some time after the publication of the sensational ar- 
ticle in Niles's Register, there was no apparent reason for 
believing that the United States was to be made the base of 
any Napoleonic enterprise. Jung says, in his memoirs of 
Lucien Bonaparte, that in July, 18 17, a schooner, the Aile, 
left Philadelphia under the command of a Captain Huibet 
for the purpose of bringing Lucien with his family and some 
of his friends to America. " The schooner reached Malta 
but was unable to reach Civita Vecchia." In lieu of positive 
evidence this expedition, if it had such an object as the one 
given by Jung, cannot be said to have had a political end. 
Jung's account may be included among his many statements 
which have their inspiration in his hostility to the Bona- 
partist cause. 3 Similarly he connects the ill-fated attempt of 
Xavier Mina against the viceroy of Mexico in 1817 as un- 
dertaken in aid of the fortunes of Joseph Bonaparte, the ex- 
king of Spain. Nothing has been found to support this 
statement. The younger Mina had always been opp6sed to 
the Bonapartes in Spain, though his uncle, General Espos y 
Mina, told Joseph Bonaparte that had Napoleon agreed to 
remove the French troops from Spain in 1812, he would 
have been willing to recognize Joseph as the rightful occu- 
pant of the Spanish throne. 4 That the Mina expedition oc- 
curred at the time when such a conspiracy was said to have 
been on foot, and when, as will be seen later, Lallemand was 
organizing his Texan colony of Champ d'Asile, near the 
scene of Mina's defeat, is probably nothing more than a co- 
incidence. 

There was one man in the United States who had reason 
to fear the consequences of the presence of a member of the 
Bonaparte family in America, and that, as has been said, 



2 Niles's Register, XI, 60. 
8 Jung, III, 380. 

*Du Casse, Memoires du Roi Joseph, X, 240. 



48 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [570 

was Hyde de Neuville, the minister from the Bourbon 
Louis XVIII, resident at Washington. De Neuville had a 
close watch kept upon the movements of the Count de Sur- 
villiers and took careful note of his relations with the body 
of Napoleonic officers who congregated at Philadelphia and 
at Bordentown. While at Philadelphia, late in August, 
18 1 7, he came into possession of some letters which had 
been sent to the Count de Survilliers and intercepted in all 
probability by one of the minister's agents. De Neuville, 
upon reading them, left post-haste for Washington to in- 
terview Rush, who was acting as secretary of state, and to 
lay the papers before him for presentation to the President. 5 
In a note to Rush he stated that some very important papers 
had fallen into his hands, the authority of which could not 
be doubted. Their purpose was sufficiently clear to raise his 
fears that a conspiracy had been developed involving the 
security of his French master and the peace of the United 
States. His first note did not explain what the papers were, 
but that the plan disclosed by them was as dangerous as 
could be. Before deciding that the plan as outlined in the 
papers was merely the delirium of a madman, he desired to 
settle the question of the genuineness of the documents. " I 
can," he wrote, " in no event neglect any measure of pre- 
caution and as the affair particularly interests the federal 
government " he brought it to its notice unofficially that an 
exhaustive examination of the papers might be made. While 
if genuine, as he believed the papers were, the project pre- 
sented danger, the conspirator who was the author of them 
was no less a madman. 3 

Soon afterwards De Neuville brought the documents to 



5 Hyde de Neuville, Memoires et Souvenirs, II, 321. 

6 Hyde de Neuville to the Secretary of State, Philadelphia, August 
30, 1817, MS. John Quincy Adams Papers; same to the same, Sep- 
tember 7, 1817, MS. Archives, Bureau of Indexes and Archives, 
Department of State ; Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, IV, 9 ; Hyde 
de Neuville to the Due de Richelieu, August 31, 1817, Memoires et 
Souvenirs, II, 319. Rush was acting secretary until September 22, 
1817, when John Quincy Adams took the oath of office. 



57i ] The Napoleonic Confederation. 



49 



John Quincy Adams, who had taken charge of the Depart- 
ment of State, and together they made an examination of 
them. The package which was wrapped in four covers, was 
addressed "A Monsieur le Comte de Survilliers, pour lui 
seul" and sealed with the insignia of the Convention, the 
liberty-cap on the head of a pike ; surrounding the device 
were the words " Lakanal, Deputy to the National Conven- 
tion." Within the packet were six documents, each in a 
bold handwriting, plainly without disguise, and signed by 
the same hand. De Neuville had no doubt whatever that 
they were the work of the one whose seal enclosed the 
packet, and the Secretary of State, on examining and com- 
paring them with other letters of Lakanal, concurred in 
De Neuville's opinion that they were undoubtedly genuine. 

After consultation with Adams, the French minister 
addressed the following official note to the department, 
September 12: 

" Sir, 

" Circumstances of a very extraordinary nature have 
caused several documents to fall into my hands which 
announce the existence in America of an association organ- 
ized under the name of the Napoleonean Confederacy. From 
these papers, which I have already had the honor to com- 
municate to you, it results that a very considerable levy of 
men is on the eve of taking place in some of the Western 
States or Territories. 

" The apparent object of this conspiracy is the conquest ot 
a Spanish province ; but the real one is only known to the 
leaders ; according to their own report, it is to cause Joseph 
Bonaparte to be proclaimed in Mexico, King of Spain and 
the Indies. 

" An enterprise of this nature appeared to me, at first 
view, so improbable, that I considered these papers as forged 
and designedly placed in such a way as to come under my 
view, although they were brought to me under the seal of 
secrecy by persons worthy of entire confidence. 



50 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [S7 2 

" In a case of such moment, involving so deeply the in- 
terests of the Federal Government, the peace of both hemi- 
spheres, and the honor of my country thus committed in a 
foreign land, by Frenchmen whom it has been necessary to 
exile and even to repulse from their native country, but the 
greater part of whom are not forever ejected from its bosom, 
it was my duty to precipitate nothing, to hazard nothing, and 
above all to neglect nothing which could well establish the 
authenticity of this culpable and even mad correspondence; 
for how is it possible that certain individuals should believe 
that Spaniards, who originally placed themselves in a state 
of insurrection only to escape the yoke of Napoleon, would 
now consent to accept a Bonaparte for master, and that 
citizens of the United States would take up arms to conquer 
a throne for him? 

" It is very painful for me, Sir, to be under the necessity 
of unfolding an intrigue which might possibly implicate 
subjects of His Majesty the King my Master; but I still 
cherish the hope that among the Frenchmen whose names 
have been used on this occasion, there are several who, 
having been for some time desirous of putting themselves 
under the protection of the government of their own country, 
will not have connected themselves with a project so directly 
opposed to the object they have in view ; that others have 
only been misled for a moment, and that, finally, all the 
odium and madness of the Napoleonean Confederation will 
fall on some individuals, without country, without remorse, 
who in 1817 have audacity to employ their criminal seal of 
1793, and thus proclaim the fatal part they bore in our most 
deplorable misfortunes. Are these men ignorant that they 
inhabit the land of liberty and not that of anarchy? Do 
they not know that there is not a single good American who 
is not struck with horror at the crimes which these disastrous 
times recall to our memory ? 

" My first verifications, as well as those which you since 
had the goodness to make jointly with me, no longer leaving 
any doubt of the authenticity of the papers which have been 



573] 



The Napoleonic Confederation. 



5i 



delivered to me, I have the honor to request you, Sir, to make 
the President of the United States acquainted with this 
event. 

" The papers to be submitted to him consist of a letter of 
four pages, headed ULTIMATUM. This letter is wholly 
written as you yourself ascertained, in the hand of the said 
Lakanal, formerly a member of the Convention, and who, 
by the documents annexed to my letter, appears now to be 
invested with the character of Principal Commissioner near 
the Executive Committee. — 2. Of a REPORT, forming 
twenty-three pages, likewise in the handwriting of Mr. 
Lakanal. — 3. A PETITION of the same Lakanal, — by 
which Joseph Bonaparte is requested to exercise, from the 
moment, his rights of sovereignty, to grant commissions, 
distribute crosses, ribbands, to create counties, marquisates 
&c, &c, and above all to confer on the petitioner ' a Spanish 
distinction ' as ' this new mark of your gracious favor will 
give me/ adds he, ' a degree of political importance, in the 
eyes of your Mexican subjects, which I venture to assure 
Your Majesty will promote Your Majesty's best interests.' — 
4. A vocabulary of the wandering Indians in the neighbor- 
hood of Mexico, towards Santa Fe. — 5. A list of the Indian 
Tribes inhabiting northern Louisiana, etc. — 6. An enigmat- 
ical vocabulary composed of forty-two columns or alphabets, 
with a Latin word corresponding with each letter. This 
vocabulary is followed by a key, beginning thus, ' In using 
this vocabulary the Latin word may be written, although 
that language be not understood, and the following use is to 
be made of it.' The key concludes with this article of the 
rules : ' Every partial correspondence should be headed 
with this word, " Oratio," a prayer, because it will appear 
merely to be an extract, whether in express terms, or in 
others equivalent, of the Lord's Prayer, and because this 
innocent stratagem may have its effect upon the minds of 
the Spaniards, who are generally attentive to all religious 
forms.' — 7. Of four covers which enclosed the packet. 

" Such, Sir, are the documents composing this correspond- 



52 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



[574 



ence. My first duty was to give an account of this event to 
my government ; my next was to come and confer upon the 
subject of it with the Federal Government which will doubt- 
less see in the zeal of my conduct a new proof of the frank 
and loyal friendship of my Sovereign. 

" Allow me, Sir, to request you to have the goodness to 
inform me, as soon as possible, of the measures which the 
President will have judged proper to prescribe, that I may 
communicate them without delay to His Majesty, the King 
my Master, who, I doubt not, will be most happy to learn 
that a plot threatening to disturb the tranquility of this 
country, and become a subject of alarm and discord to both 
continents, has been stifled at its birth by the wisdom and 
firmness of the Federal Government. 

" I request you, Sir, to be pleased to tender my profound 
respects to the President, and to accept the renewed assur- 
ances of my highest consideration. 

" The Minister of France, G. Hyde de Neuville. 
Washington, September 12, 1817." 7 

De Neuville enclosed with this note certified copies of the 
papers referred to, with the exception of the " enigmatical 
vocabulary," which is not on file. 

The " Ultimatum " is as follows : " Sire ! 

" I am charged to lay before Your Majesty the annexed 
documents, and to request that Your Majesty will be pleased 
to examine them in order in which they are presented. 

" I was invited to repair to Your Majesty for the purpose 
of making this important communication ; but, being on the 
eve of setting out on a long and fatiguing journey, it became 
necessary for me to husband both my strength and my funds. 

" I was unwilling however to trust this important dispatch 
to the mail, as that conveyance would not have offered the 
certainty of an inviolable secrecy. 

" The person who has undertaken to deliver these papers, 



7 De Neuville to John Quincy Adams, September 17, 1817, MS. 
Archives, Bureau of Indexes and Archives, Department of State. 
The translation was made in the department at the time. 



575] 



The Napoleonic Confederation. 



53 



to the contents of which he is an titter stranger, is not per- 
sonally known to me, but he is to those who merit my entire 
confidence. 

" Throughout the whole of this important enterprise I 
have had no other merit, Sire, than that of conducting myself 
in these countries as a man of honor, and of rendering useful 
to Your Majesty's service, the tender and profound venera- 
tion felt for Your August Dynasty ; I have already on several 
occasions entertained Your Majesty on these general dispo- 
sitions of the minds and feelings of the people of these 
countries. 

" Deign, Sire, to transmit to me your orders, as speedily 
as it may please Your Majesty; as Your Majesty will be 
sensible of all the danger attending the smallest delay. 

" I repeat to Your Majesty that the common profession 
of our political faith is and always will be : ' The King has 
nothing to do in this afTair ; it is our unbounded devotion to 
His Illustrious Dynasty, which prompts us to act ; we are 
consistant in our principles ; we wish for free states only, 
and legitimate princes in the just acceptation which Reason 
gives to these words. The King neither will, nor can, sur- 
render his rights ; but he expects everything from the good- 
ness of his cause and the attachment of the brave Spaniards, 
seconded by all the friends of the cause of nations, arrayed 
against Power imposed by Force.' 

" I await Your Majesty's answer with extreme impatience. 

" I have the honor to be, Sire, Your Majesty's Most 
Humble, Most Obedient and Most Faithful Servant and 
Subj ect, 

Lakanal." 8 

The personal petition of Lakanal follows. This is indeed 
the delirium of a madman and it is difficult to see what the 
learned Lakanal meant in some of his phrases. 
" Sire : 

" Deign to cast your eyes on this petition, which is of a 



8 Original, certified copy and official translation, MS. Archives, 
Department of State. 



54 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [576 



personal nature, although closely connected with the great 
enterprise. Some preliminary observations, though brief, 
are rendered indispensible. 

" If, in the tenth century, Capet usurped the crown of the 
weak Louis V, this outrage, notorious and well-authenti- 
cated, cannot be obligatory upon the nation which was 
degraded and oppressed by it. 

" To say, in the nineteenth century, that nations composed 
of a numerous, enlightened and brave population, are the 
patrimony of a few families destitute of courage and under- 
standing, is a folly undeserving of any answer dictated by 
common-sense. 

" A general and just outcry has been raised against negro- 
slavery, — but shall not white men be free? And shall not 
the world ring with cries against cannibalism, when the 
inevitable period arrives when nations, roused by indigna- 
tion, shall break with fury their chains on their oppressors 
heads ? 

" Our villagers, our very children, now-a-days, know that 
men are born free ; that populous nations are the sovereigns, 
and that the only legitimate Kings are the Kings of their 
free choice. 

! " Two ages of darkness, the diplomatic quackery of the 
cabinets of Europe, the juggling of the priesthood, will never 
prevail against these immutable truths. 

" Sire, Your Majesty alone reigns lawfully over the 
Spains and the Indies ; and if the decree of fate remove you 
forever from a throne lawfully acquired, it would not be less 
the just patrimony of your children. 

" The imbecile Bourbons know all this as well as we do, 
and this terrifying idea affrights them even in the recesses 
of their usurped palaces. Millions of bayonets were neces- 
sary to remove the Illustrious Dynasty of Your Majesty 
from the throne, and millions of bayonets are wanted to keep 
the stupid Bourbons there. 



577] The Napoleonic Confederation. 



55 



" Will Your Majesty be pleased to allow me to address 
you a question ? 

" Why do you not continue to exercise the acts of sover- 
eignty ? 

" Although far distant from a throne which he had never 
filled, Louis, the imposed and the impostor, did for the space 
of twenty years grant pensions, distribute brevets, crosses 
and ribbands, create counties, marquisates, &c. &c. 

" In the position in which I am placed by the momentous 
interests of Your Majesty, I respectfully request of you to 
confer upon me a Spanish distinction, which may affiliate 
me in some sort with that nation, with which I have been 
greatly conversant from my childhood, at the foot of the 
Pyreneean Mountains, having been born in the ancient 
County of Foix, now the Department of the Ariege, where 
a part of my family still resides. 

" This new mark of your gracious favor will give me a 
degree of political importance in the eyes of your Mexican 
subjects, which, I venture to assure you, will promote Your 
Majesty's best interests. 

" My irrevocable resolution is to make known that Your 
Majesty has taken no part in this great affair, and that you 
expect everything from the goodness of your cause, and 
from the good-will of the Spanish Nation. 

" I have the honor to be, Sire, Your Majesty's Most 
Humble, Most Obedient, and Most Faithful Servant and 
Subject, 

Lakanal." 9 

The report is somewhat more lucid, especially when it 
asks the " King " to grant 65,000 francs in aid of the enter- 
prise : 

" REPORT addressed to His Majesty, the King of Spain 
and the Indies, by his Faithful Subjects, the Citizens com- 
posing the Napoleonean Confederation. 



"Original, certified copy and official translation, MS. Archives, 
Department of State. 



56 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



[578 



" Sire :— 

" In the course of the profound reflections which we have 
made upon the momentous subject which occupies us, and 
which constantly engages our thoughts, that on which we 
have dwelt the longest, as being the most easy to realize, has 
been to repair to the spot with some evidence of your 
goodness. 

" We at first proceeded upon a small scale, because we 
only thought of acting with our individual means. 

" Against the success of our enterprise, there were many 
numerous chances. However, we were devoted, the sacri- 
fice was entire, we held nothing in reserve. 

" By the progressive increase of information which sprang 
up on all sides, when we saw ourselves surrounded by a 
number of experienced associates, a project which was but 
indistinctly seen and was in some sort the spring of our 
first ideas, became a regular plan, well concerted in its 
ensemble and judiciously calculated in all its details. 

" However, in organizing a sort of civic propaganda, we 
have only contemplated forming an enterprise perfectly 
civil ; the accessories, such as uniforms, arms, tents, which 
seem to carry with them a certain military character, are only 
intended for our personal preservation. 

" Nevertheless, on casting our eyes on the statement of the 
Indian tribes annexed to this report, the greater part of 
whom rove through the countries we must pass through, we 
have been aware of the necessity of being in a situation to 
resist them, in case these turbulent tribes should show marks 
of hostility. 

" We have thought it equally important to anticipate any 
possible attack from a Spanish party, as the best means of 
subduing it. 

" Finally, it has appeared advantageous to show ourselves 
with a respectable display of force, to secure the prompt 
success of the negotiation. 

" In this state of things, our common deliberation has 
reached its highest maturity, and its results are invariably 



579] 



The Napoleonic Confederation. 



57 



fixed in the project of an arrete, which we are about to 
submit to Your Majesty. 

" We request Your Majesty to remark, that in the course 
of our successive propositions, there have been neither ter- 
giversation nor retrograde steps. 

" The frame of our project has merely been enlarged 
because we have looked in the face all the obstacles which 
were to be overcome ; but all our steps toward the proposed 
object are, we hesitate not to say, so many points of a 
straight line. 

" At the present moment, and under every possible sup- 
position, our success is ascertained, or there is nothing 
certain on earth. 

"The following is the definite project; the first dispatch 
which will follow it, will be dated from Mexico or near to 
the frontiers of that Kingdom. 

" Article I. The Napoleonean Confederation shall be 
extended to the effective number of nine hundred members, 
armed and equipped as flankers of the Independent Troops 
of Mexico. 

" Article 2. With a view to combine secrecy with celerity 
in this operation, there shall be named immediately one 
hundred and fifty members, as Commissioners, who shall 
repair without delay to the different points of the states, of 
the Missouri Territory, of the Illinois Territory, of the Dis- 
trict of Columbia, of the Michigan Territory, of Tennessee, 
Kentucky and Ohio, pointed out in the statement, which will 
be annexed to the present arrete. 

" Population of the above States and Territories : 

Missouri Terr 20,845 Michigan Terr. . . 4,762 

Illinois Terr 12,282 Tennessee Terr. . . 261,727 

Mississippi Terr. . . 40,352 Kentucky 406,511 

Dist. of Columbia. . 24,023 Ohio (uncertain) 

" Article 4. Each Commissioner shall repair to the 
places, where are his relations, friends, acquaintances and 
connections and shall associate with him as many as five 



58 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [580 



individuals, known by their principles to be favorable to 
the nature of the undertaking, and shall endeavor to attach 
them still more strongly to it, by some small presents, bene- 
fits and by hopes founded upon future contingencies soon to 
be realized, according to the character and condition of the 
persons ; he shall not unfold himself as to the ultimate object 
of the enterprise, and on all occasions, he shall employ 
economy and circumspection. 

" Article 5. The period for the return of the Commis- 
sioners is irrevocably fixed and during their mission they 
shall inform the Executive Committee, day by day, and in 
cipher, of the progress of their operations, and point out to 
it the objects of armament and equipment, which cannot be 
procured upon the spot, in order that the Committee may 
take the most speedy means of obtaining them with the funds 
placed at its disposal. 

" Article 6. There shall be immediately appointed a 
Commissioner to repair successively to Louisville, Natchez 
and, if necessary, to New Orleans to procure at the expense 
of the Confederation two field-pieces in fit order for service. 

" Article 7. The statement of the new expenses to be 
incurred in the execution of the present arrete is adopted as 
prepared by the Special Commissioner ; in consequence the 
charges of equipment, armament and provisions remain fixed 
at the rate of 200 francs for each one of the seven hundred 
and fifty members, who are to be added to the Confedera- 
tion; the total of the additional expense to be incurred is 
150,000 francs. But several of the new members will be 
able to contribute personally, instead of being a burden to 
the common fund ; others will be equipped at their expense ; 
others will be enabled to make advances. From the views 
taken, which are considered exact, or at least satisfactory, 
it is estimated that only half of the new members will be 
chargeable to the Society; in consequence, the additional 
expense will be reduced to the sum of 65,000 francs. 

" Article, the last. His Majesty, King Joseph, shall be 
humbly entreated to have that sum placed at the disposal of 



581] The Napoleonic Confederation. 59 

his faithful subjects, the members composing the Napo- 
leonean Confederation. 

" A recipisse shall be addressed to the King signed by all 
the said members to establish their individual responsibility. 

"Sire! Your Majesty will thus have formed a fund of 
100,000 francs, if you will be pleased to receive favorably 
our last and definite resolutions. 

" The certainty is thus afforded to Your Majesty of re- 
conquering one of the first thrones in the universe, and of 
reestablishing Your Illustrious Dynasty ! 

" The success of this new levy cannot be doubted by those, 
who, being sincerely devoted to the august cause of Your 
Majesty, have, in addition, the exact local information. 
Indeed, in the western states the agricultural laborers are 
almost wholly directed to the cultivation of Indian-corn, 
which should be planted before the end of May, not to be 
injured by the early frosts of the Autumn. This bread-food 
when carefully worked requires no further labor; its vege- 
tative power triumphs over the rank herbage which a strong 
soil produces in abundance. Thus summer and autumn are 
seasons of rest for the western Americans ; hunting, fishing, 
adventurous enterprises then occupy them exclusively. 

" With zeal, some address, a central point with men known 
and esteemed, the success of the prompt levy which engages 
us cannot be uncertain ; and we are entitled to assure Your 
Majesty, that this levy has never been, throughout all our 
deliberations, the subject of a doubt. 

" The western American is discreet, reserved, impenetra- 
ble in matters of importance ; we all have the most thorough 
conviction, that the secret will be religiously kept, as to the 
real object of the enterprise, if anything of it should tran- 
spire from incidental circumstances. 

" Sire ! We are about to act as if Your Majesty's answer 
were confirmative of our last resolutions. The essential 
part of the enterprise, that is to say, the personal part, will 
be ready to act when we shall receive the answer which we 
humbly request of Your Majesty. 



6o The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [582 

" If Your Majesty do not approve of our last resolutions, 
we would act upon the more confined plan formerly sub- 
mitted to you. 

" We conclude by a consideration which appears to us of 
an immense weight : — 

" If Your Majesty, as worthy of reigning as you are 
capable of viewing a crown in its just lights, and which is 
so much beneath your personal virtues, do not wish to 
engage in anything decisive as relates to Your Majesty, may 
you deign not to lose sight of the import and interests of 
your children, and of the people who look up to you as a 
second father ! " 

" Then," the copy concludes, " follow the signatures." 10 
Who the signers of the Report were, it is impossible to deter- 
mine, and indeed it is not absolutely certain that the signa- 
tures were actually appended to the original of the report 
in the intercepted packet. 

The plan as disclosed in these intercepted papers was bold 
enough to excite the alarm of the French minister, and as 
the Secretary of State wrote to the President, " the repre- 
sentative of a Bourbon sovereign might fairly claim to be 
indulged in an extraordinary degree of solicitude with 
regard to any project in which the Buonaparte family are 
concerned." 11 

The amusing nature of these remarkable documents was 
quite lost upon De Neuville. He at once wrote the Due de 
Richelieu that he had come into possession of these import- 
ant papers almost by an act of Providence. That they were 
genuine, he had no doubt, and they undoubtedly disclosed an 
awful plot on the part of the French refugees. " The plan," 
he wrote, " is like that of Colonel Burr, the insurrection of 
the West, with the real but concealed object of making 

10 Original, certified copy and official translation, MS. Archives, 
Department of State. 

"Adams to Monroe, September 27, 1817, MS. Monroe Papers, Li- 
brary of Congress. 



583 1 The Napoleonic Confederation. 



61 



Joseph Bonaparte King of Mexico. 12 I have no doubt but 
that the President will at once take all necessary precautions 
to break up the scheme, for if this insurrection takes place 
and succeeds, there can be no doubt it will result in the 
separation of the Western States." De Neuville again 
expresses the fear that Napoleon might escape from St. 
Helena, and begs that strictest watch be kept upon that 
island, " Oil en serait-on si cet homme prodigieux arrivait 
an M exique dejd conquis? " 13 

Lakanal was known to be connected with the Tombigbee 
enterprise in which the exiled French officers had taken part. 
While Joseph Bonaparte had no active interest in the com- 
pany, those nearest him were its projectors and leaders. It 
was probably that of the Tombigbee Company to which 
Lakanal refers as " the more confined plan formerly sub- 
mitted " to him. From the documents themselves, it 
appeared that Lakanal had had personal interviews with the 
Count, and he was careful to add that the organization of 
" La Confederation Napoleonienne " had proceeded without 
the concurrence of his " Master." " The long and fatigu- 
ing journey " which Lakanal mentions in the " Ultimatum " 
is doubtless the projected one to the Tombigbee with the 
" Society for the Cultivation of the Vine and Olive." 

The " Report " seems partly to be an account of what had 
already been done, and, according to Lakanal's statement, 
what was at first an organization without any political pur- 
pose, had taken when the report was prepared, a definite 
plan, " well concerted in its ensemble and judiciously calcu- 
lated in all its details." This was to capture by force of 
arms the territory "on the frontier of Mexico towards Santa 
Fe," by means of a company of nine hundred, of which 
number a hundred and fifty had already been enrolled. Aided 
by citizens of the United States who were to be enlisted for 
the most part in the west, they were to aid the " Independent 

12 De Neuville to De Richelieu, August 31, 1817, Memoires et 
Souvenirs, II, 319. 

13 Ibid., II, 321. 



62 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



[584 



Troops of Mexico " to overthrow the Spanish power there, 
and to place Joseph Bonaparte " upon his rightful throne." 14 
Finally, as if the writer feared that Joseph Bonaparte would 
refuse his co-operation, even after the success of the enter- 
prise was well assured, he was told that he surely ought not 
" to lose sight of the import and interests of his children," 
surely a strange argument, when in the " Petition " the same 
writer had asserted that " to say, in the nineteenth century, 
that nations composed of a numerous, enlightened and brave 
population, are the patrimony of a few families, is a folly 
undeserving of any answer dictated by common sense." 

It was admitted that only one hundred and fifty of the 
required nine hundred members of the " Confederation " had 
been enrolled, and from " Article 2," of the " Report " it 
was probable that they constituted the body of " Commis- 
sioners." Each " Commissioner " was to associate with him 
five others to make up the required number. These were to 
go in unaware of the real object of the enterprise, being 
persuaded by " small presents, benefits and by hopes founded 
upon future contingencies, soon to be realized " ! Such 
being, in brief, the intent of the enterprise, it remained to be 
seen what active measures had been initiated to establish the 
" Napoleonic Confederation of America." 



14 J. Q. Adams, Memoirs, IV, 11, September 29, 1817. Crawford 
told Adams that " Mr. Clay did not believe in these levies of men 
in the Western States by French emigrants." 



CHAPTER V. 



Monroe's Inquiry. 

Some days after his note of September 12, De Neuville 
requested an audience with the President to lay before him 
certain facts relative to the scheme as disclosed in the inter- 
cepted documents. This new information, he said in his 
note asking for an interview, confirmed what he had already 
learned, and its import was of a character which should 
immediately be brought to the attention of the President. 1 
As to what these new developments were there is no record, 
but they were sufficiently interesting to cause Monroe to 
begin an investigation of the whole matter. 

Associated with the Tombigbee Company was, as has been 
seen, William Lee, to whom Jefferson had written declining 
to draft a constitution for the projected colony. As Lee was 
on intimate terms with the French officers, Monroe applied 
to him to ascertain in just what the " Napoleonic Confedera- 
tion " really consisted. Towards the end of September, Lee 
reported to the Secretary of State what he had been able to 
learn, and after giving the substance of it orally to the 
President, he sent him a copy of his report dated September 
27, 18 17. 2 From this report it appeared that the younger 
Lallemand had just returned from New Orleans, and while 
there he had sent a French officer of talents to Mexico to 
sound the patriots on the scheme of bringing the French 
exiles to their assistance. Returning to Philadelphia, the 
French officer reported the Mexican patriots to be eager for 
aid and that two of the most opulent and influential men in 



*De Neuville to the Secretary of State, September 18, 1817, MS. 
Archives, Department of State. 

2 William Lee to Monroe, September 27, 1817; Rush to Monroe, 
September 23 and 30, 1817, MS. Monroe Papers, Library of Con- 
gress ; John Quincy Adams, Memoirs, IV, II. 



6 4 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [586 



Mexico, Valencias and Cordovo (" if," wrote Lee, " I have 
their names correct"), " are ready with all their means, 
being- proprietors of the largest mines, and having at their 
disposal ten thousand raw troops, who only wait for French 
officers to discipline them." Lee was certain that assistance 
was not confined to these Mexicans. He discovered that a 
mercantile house in Charleston, South Carolina, had offered 
" money and two brigs well armed. Some merchants in 
Philadelphia, among whom is a Mr. Curcier, some at New 
York, and two in Boston, Stackpole and Adams, are also 
connected in the enterprise." The two Lallemands and 
Colonel Galabert were at the head of the scheme, and Lee 
claimed that they had already engaged " eighty French 
officers and one thousand men." The elder Lallemand, he 
reported, intended going up the Red River with his officers 
and about four hundred men " there to form a noyau for 
collecting together all his forces." 

Lee goes on to connect the Tombigbee Company with the 
Mexican scheme, and we learn why it was that so few of the 
allotments made to the French officers under the government 
grant were occupied. " They represent that though they 
have ample funds in Mexico for all their purposes, they are 
in want here of the means of putting their plans in execution. 
For the purpose of obtaining the means, they have been 
endeavoring to force upon the company formed for making 
a settlement on the Tombeeby, about an hundred officers as 
subscribers, for whole, half and quarter shares of the four 
townships granted by Congress to the French emigrants. 
These shares, when obtained, to be placed in the hands of 
certain merchants in Philadelphia, who are to advance them 
50 or 60,000 dollars thereon, which, they calculate, will be 
sufficient to begin their expedition with, but in this they will 
be disappointed, for it appears that Mr. Villar, the President 
of the Tombeeby Society, having obtained some hints of 
their plans, communicated the same to Generals Clausel, 
Desnouettes, Vandamme, Grouchy, and Count Real, con- 
cerned in the association, who have taken measures to 



587] 



Monroe's Inquiry. 



65 



prevent the mass of these officers from becoming subscribers 
to their company, as well as to shut out the possibility of 
those who have heretofore subscribed, of obtaining titles to 
their shares in these townships, without which no transfers 
can be made and of course no facilities obtained. 

" All the French officers of distinction except the Lalle- 
mands disapprove of this project. Gen. Vandamme censured 
yesterday Genl. Lallemand and Colo. Galaber in so pointed a 
manner, before Mr. Villar and Colo. Taillorde (who were 
sent here by the Tombeeby Company to confer with Mr. 
Crawford) that a serious quarrel like to have ensued. 

" It appears certain that Joseph B. has pointedly refused 
all aid and assistance to this and the like schemes ; — that he 
has been solicited in every way and all means used, to induce 
him to patronize these adventurers without success, on which 
account they are liberal in their epithets against him." 

Lee gained all his information, he says, from Colonel 
Galabert, and having the matter well in hand, denounced 
the whole scheme to the elder Lallemand in person. " I laid 
before him in as strong terms as I am master of, a picture 
of the mischiefs his projects were calculated to heap upon 
his countrymen and their friends in the U. States ; — the pain 
it would cause to the administration, to find him sacrificing 
his reputation by violating our laws and that hospitality and 
protection they had afforded him. He promised me not to 
prosecute his plan of attacking Mexico until next winter, 
when he was well assured by some influential members of 
Congress something would be done by that body in favor of 
the Spanish patriots, declaring that all that he had hitherto 
done was under that expectation and a firm belief that this 
Government wished well to the revolution in Spanish 
America, and that his brother and himself had determined 
not to engage in anything of this nature if disagreeable to 
them." Lee took the general's statement with a grain of 
salt, saying to Monroe, " this declaration I do not now 
credit." In order to ascertain the opinion of the other 
officers, Lee then interviewed General Vandamme, Colonel 



66 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



[588 



Taillade, and Mr. Villars, who, he was assured, were not 
interested in the scheme. Lee stated to them that " if they 
would not find means to put a stop to these doings, they 
would all partake of the disgrace, and that all the friends of 
proscribed and persecuted Frenchmen would have to support 
the mortification of seeing them placed with this Government 
and people in that situation their enemies desired and were 
continually laboring to produce. I was happy to find they 
agreed with me and felt perfectly the force of my observa- 
tions. Genl. Vandamme in taking leave of me this morning 
said that he would on his return to Philadelphia probe this 
affair to the bottom, that he would himself denounce it to the 
Government before he would suffer the last asylum offered 
to himself and countrymen to be endangered by the conduct 
of a set of boys, fools and madmen." 

In January, 18 18, Lee saw Galabert go into Onis's house. 
Adams records in his diary under date of January 23, i8i8, a 
" at the office W. Lee came and told me that he had de- 
manded of Galabert an explanation of his going into Onis's 
and received a very imperfect one. He had written from 
Philadelphia to Onis telling him that if he could be furnished 
with the means of coming here he could make communica- 
tions which would be useful to him. Upon which he (Onis) 
sent him a hundred dollar bill. He had therefore come and 
made his communication but would not tell Lee what it was. 
He said he had asked of Onis a passport to Mexico which 
Onis had not given him but took it into consideration and 
told him to call again. But Galabert had received a letter 
from Joseph Bonaparte urging him not to enter into the wild 
and extravagent projects of these French fugitives and 
offering him the means of settling himself in Pennsylvania. 
Lee says that he saved Galabert's life at Bordeaux but that 
the intriguing ways of a Frenchman are past finding out." 

Three days before this interview, Adams received another 
report from Lee which suggested that the plans of the 



8 John Quincy Adams, Memoirs, IV, 48. 



589] 



Monroe's Inquiry. 



67 



Lallemands had been changed since he had made his former 
report. Lee wrote : 

" It appears the Generals L'Allemand are seriously en- 
gaged in an expedition destined for some part of Spanish 
America. 

" They are purchasing arms and ammunition in New 
York. 

" They have agents in Louisiana and the Mississippi 
enlisting frenchmen and others. 

" They have agents in St. Domingo Martinique & Guade- 
loupe engaging in the first all the whites they can find and 
encouraging in the two last deserters from the Royal Army 
which they expect to succeed in to a considerable extent from 
their standing & character with the french military. 

" They have it is said engaged in the U States about three 
hundred men. 

" Aury's forces it is said is to join them and I am told 
they have acted from the beginning with them. 

" They are going to the Danish Island of St Thomas 
where a rendezvous is established it is said under the indul- 
gence of the Governor of the Island who served as Colonel 
with Genl L'Allemand and is much attached to him. 

" They calculated on about 1500 men besides officers — 
with this force they are to leave St Thomas for some port in 
the Gulf of Darien to cross the Isthmus for Panama there 
embark for Guayaquil & throw themselves into the moun- 
tains of Quito in the Province of Peru where there are no 
troops to oppose them and where they mean to make a stand. 
They expect to conquer that province and intend to organize 
it in such a manner as to afford protection to all who chuse 
to join their standard. 

" Another expedition is talked of at the head of which is 
to be placed the Count of Galvez son of the Count of Galvez 
who was proclaimed King of Mexico in the insurrection of 

1787. 

" But it appears there are so many difficulties in the way 
of this second expedition that the chiefs have not much con- 



68 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [590 

fidence in their success in organizing it for the present — It is 
represented that the Count de Galvez is much beloved in 
Mexico & that he has only to present himself to cause a 
complete revolution there where his agents are busily 
employed. 

" He is endeavouring to form a small expedition to operate 
under the protection of Lallemand's but that general's views 
of occupancy are so remote from Mexico that he does not en- 
courage it. 

" All this information comes from a person connected with 
the Count of Galvez and is thought to be correct for which 
reason it is communicated to the Secretary of State." * 

Before leaving Philadelphia to acquaint the government 
with the nature of the Lakanal papers, De Neuville informed 
Onis, the Spanish minister, of what had been discovered, 
and that the plot was directed against the Mexican posses- 
sions of the King of Spain. Onis wrote immediately to the 
Secretary, asking that Joseph Bonaparte (whom he believed 
to be the promoter of the enterprise) and " the other adven- 
turers who have taken shelter in this country," be obliged 
to keep themselves within the bounds prescribed by justice 
and the general interest of all nations." 5 The United 
States, he hoped, would not violate its neutrality with the 
powers of Europe. The excitable nature of Onis had easily 
been worked upon, and Adams did not consider it necessary 
to accede to his request so long as there was absolutely no 
evidence, beyond Lakanal's statement that he had had certain 
conversations with Bonaparte, to show that the ex-King 
knew aught of the scheme. There is indeed, from the very 
same papers of Lakanal, evidence to show that as these docu- 



4 Lee to Adams, January 20, 1818, MS. John Quincy Adams 
Papers. This letter is not signed but is endorsed in Adams's hand: 
"Lee, W. 20. Jan. 1818. Lallemand's." Cf. Schouler's History of 
the United States, III, 29. 

5 Onis to Adams, September 6, 1817, MS. Archives, Department of 
State. No answer appears to have been made to it. Adams be- 
lieved that Onis was mixed up in Lallemand's scheme. Galabert's 
connection with Onis gave him reason for thinking so. Memoirs, IV, 
48, 84, 100. 



59i] 



Monroe's Inquiry. 



69 



ments had been intercepted, the person to whom they were 
addressed was altogether unaware of the proceeding, and 
Lee's report showed that if Joseph Bonaparte did know of 
the scheme, he had denounced it so roundly as to excite the 
anger of the conspirators. 

Adams drafted a reply to the note of De Neuville, of Sep- 
tember 12, on the twenty-third of the same month and sent 
it the next day. It is not to be found in the files of the offi- 
cial correspondence, and it was probably afterwards with- 
drawn. De Neuville replied to it immediately and from this 
reply it appears that the Secretary's note outlined the policy 
of the government to be that so long as there was no evidence 
of any overt act on the part of the suspected conspirators 
other than those referred to in the intercepted papers, the 
government could take no steps in the matter. When any 
open manifestation should appear that the scheme was being 
put into execution, the government would see that the offen- 
ders were promptly apprehended. De Neuville desired that 
Lakanal be arrested for having written letters of so suspi- 
cious a character. 

" I believe," De Neuville wrote, " that there could be no 
obstacle to a judicial inquiry, based upon documents as 
authentic as are those which I enclosed to you in my letter 
of the twelfth of this month." He maintained that on such 
evidence the government might cause the arrest " of that 
one of the conspirators, whose writings and signatures have 
been verified and recognized." He declared his motive for 
action to be the immediate interest of the United States in 
the subject, and hence, as he said, his aim was less to draw 
upon the guilty parties the just rigor of the law, than to 
put a stop to the whole nefarious undertaking. " It is not 
my place to examine the precise line which the institutions 
of this country draw between the intent and the overt act. 
But it seems to me that nothing could better establish the 
fact of an actual transgression and of criminal undertakings, 
than signed documents which leave no doubt as to the ex- 
istence of this plan of an organized propaganda with 



7o 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [592 



an executive committee which acts, deliberates, appoints 
commissioners, and confesses already to have received from 
a pretended King of Spain and the Indies the necessary 
funds for the first expenses of the Confederation. It has 
been my opinion that circumstances as grave as these, and 
others connected with them, should be considered as the be-' 
ginning of the execution of the plan, and would suffice at 
least to begin a judicial inquiry. I regret that this informa- 
tion cannot be had at present, as its probable result would 
be to disclose fully projects not only hostile to France but 
to all established governments." 6 

Adams's course was manifestly the only one. De Neu- 
ville could not prove that the Count De Survilliers had con- 
tributed to any political enterprise either in money or in en- 
couragement. The only basis for an investigation was that 
given by the intercepted papers. These were only believed 
to be genuine, though indeed the Secretary did not conceal 
his belief that they had been written by the man whose 
signature appeared upon them. This, however, was merely 
a matter of opinion and could not be introduced in support 
of a legal inquiry. Adams advised the French minister to 
have the paper published, thus exposing the plan and bringing 
ridicule upon those supposedly connected with it. De Neu- 
ville agreed to this but hoped it would only supplement the 
judicial proceedings which he still desired. 

The day following the reception of his note, De Neuville 
was called away from Washington. Before leaving, he 
asked for an interview with Adams to discuss the affairs 
under consideration. " We had a long conversation," wrote 
Adams in his diary, " of which, as well as of all others, it is 
henceforth impossible for me to keep any record. It gave 
me, however, some insight into his character. Mr. De 
Neuville's views changed so much in the course of our con- 
ference from what they had been by his letter of last evening, 



6 De Neuville to Adams, September 28, 1817, MS. Archives, De- 
partment of State. 



593] 



Monroe's Inquiry. 



71 



as made it necessary to consult with Mr. Rush and to write 
to the President." 7 

This letter to Monroe supplies the account of the inter- 
view which Adams was unable to record in his diary. The 
Secretary of State received the French minister immediately 
upon the receipt of his note requesting an interview. " He 
recurred again to the idea of seizing upon the person and 
papers of the writer of the papers communicated by him; 
or, if that was impracticable, at least he urged the immediate 
publication of the documents, with an introductory commen- 
tary, descanting upon the wickedness and the absurdity of 
the conspiracy." De Neuville informed Adams that he had 
learned through his spies of the actual levy of men by the 
conspirators, and he knew, but could not disclose, the 
names of American citizens who had entered into the move- 
ment. " I observed," the Secretary continues, " that the 
fact of the levy of men, and of its motives, had been men- 
tioned as his allegation and not as a positive fact, because this 
Government could not hold itself pleged to the reality of the 
facts nor to the authenticity of the papers." 8 

The Government could not authorize the publication of the 
papers as Lakanal would probably deny their authorship, 
and upon his denial a prosecution for libel might follow. 
De Neuville replied that he could not publish them on his 
authority as he had no evidence to prove the authenticity 
of the writings other than that based upon a comparison of 
the handwritings, nor would he " compromit the dignity of 
his own government by entering into a controversy " with 
Lakanal in the public prints. Adams advised the publica- 
tion to be made with an introductory note stating that the 
papers had been transmitted by him to the Government, 
and that although they appeared to be genuine, the ideas 
they contained were so wicked and ridiculous that they 
might yet prove spurious. De Neuville agreed to Adams's 



7 Adams's Memoirs, IV, Q. 

8 Adams to Monroe, September 27, 1817; same to the same, Octo- 
ber 8, 1817, MS. Monroe Papers, Library of Congress. 



72 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



[594 



suggestion, provided that the originals of the papers were 
deposited with some public officer for the free inspection of 
any one interested. The Secretary considered it advisable 
to refer this latter wish to the President and that the publica- 
tion of the documents be suspended until his opinions could 
be learned. De Neuville consented to the delay, as he said 
the danger of the immediate success of the conspiracy was 
lessened, because he had " by his frigates and by other meas- 
ures that he had taken, given them the alarm and put a 
check upon their progress." 

Adams was of the opinion that the conspiracy had some 
foundation in fact, for he added in his letter to the President, 
" I think it necessary to suggest to you, that indications are 
coming in from various quarters, that projects are in agita- 
tion among some of the emigrants from Europe, to which 
it will be necessary for the Government to put a stop as soon 
as possible." The chief source of his information on the 
subject, it may be surmised, was William Lee, whose report 
to the President bears the same date as the Secretary's let- 
ter. 

The President agreed that the originals of the papers be 
deposited for public inspection with some officer to be desig- 
nated, and advised that Adams draft an editorial note to 
preface the publication of the documents, as the Secretary 
had suggested to De Neuville in their interview. Monroe 
outlined the plan of the article and October 3, Adams noti- 
fied the President that the publication of the papers with his 
article would occur in a few days. The next day the draft 
of the editorial article was sent to the President who was 
then at Albemarle. In the note enclosing the draft the Sec- 
retary asked the President to name the officer with whom 
the documents were to be deposited, and suggested the 
French Consul at Philadelphia as a proper person. 9 The 
prefatory article which Adams prepared was as follows : 



9 Adams to Monroe, October 21, 1817, MS. Monroe Papers, Li- 
brary of Congress. 



595] 



Monroe's Inquiry. 



73 



" The following documents cannot fail to attract the public 
attention. They consist of a letter from the French Minister 
to the Secretary of State and of his answer, with the transla- 
tion of copies, transmitted to Mr. De Neuville with his letter, 
of several very extraordinary papers. Of their authenticity 
we express no opinion. The originals, apparently in the 
handwriting of the individual whose name is subscribed to 
the principal of them, are in the possession of the French 

Minister, and will be deposited in the hands of ( ) 

for the inspection of any person who may be desirous of veri- 
fying them. The projects which they disclosed are of a 
nature to excite in no common degree the merriment as well 
as the indignation of our readers. That foreigners, scarcely 
landed on our shores, should imagine the possibility of en- 
listing large numbers of the hardy republicans of our Wes- 
tern States and Territories in the ultra-quixotism of invading 
a territory bordering upon their country, for the purpose 
of proclaiming a phantom King of Spain and the Indies, is 
a perversity of delirium, the turpitude of which is almost 
lost in its absurdity. If it be true that attempts are making 
to engage citizens of the states in projects like that which 
appears to be the ostensible object held out as the purpose 
of this Confederacy, it will be sufficient to warn them that the 
ostensible object itself is not less contrary to the laws than 
the supposed real object is to all their habits and feelings ; 
nor may it be unreasonable to remind the foreigners who are 
now enjoying the hospitality which our country ever de- 
lights to extend to the unfortunate, that the least return 
which that country has a right to expect from them, is an 
inviolable respect for her laws." 10 

Monroe, after consulting with Rush and perhaps others of 
his cabinet, withheld his approval of Adams's article, and re- 
ferred the matter to his Cabinet for discussion at one of its 



10 This prefatory " editorial article " was enclosed in Adams's let- 
ter to Monroe of October 4, 181 7. In Bulletin No. 2 of the Bureau 
of Rolls and Library, Department of State, it is erroneously calen- 
dared as a letter from De Neuville to Adams. 



74 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



[596 



regular meetings. 11 The question was probably raised in the 
course of that meeting as to what right the French Minister 
had in addressing an official note to the Government of the 
United States when it was evident that France had no cause 
of complaint on account of the Government's conduct toward 
it; and that, at any rate, the matter concerned Spain rather 
than France. The Secretary of State was decidedly of the 
opinion that De Neuville had not exceeded his proper 
functions in his action, as he claimed his conduct proceeded 
from motives of friendship towards our Government, con- 
sidering the United States to be more deeply interested in 
putting a stop to any such enterprise than France. Adams 
admitted feeling a delicacy in causing the publication of the 
papers on account of its probable bearing upon the situation 
and personal condition of Joseph Bonaparte. " I see noth- 
ing in the papers," he wrote to Monroe, October 8, " though 
Mr. De Neuville thinks he does, that tends to prove his 
being accessory to any part of the project, and it seems hardly 
equitable that he should be made responsible before the 
public for any schemes by which madmen or desperadoes use 
his name without his knowledge or consent." The allied 
governments of Europe continued to refuse Lucien Bona- 
parte passports to enable him to go to America, and Adams 
felt a slight suspicion that the whole scheme might have been 
concocted for the very purpose of creating an alarm against 
the Bonapartes. He was unwilling, however, to extend this 
suspicion to De Neuville, but, he maintained, " if the papers 
purporting to be signed by Lakanal are genuine, the question 
still remains, whose cause they were intended to serve, 
and by what real motive they were dictated ? " 12 The publi- 
cation of the documents might serve to elucidate the whole 
matter. 

As De Neuville had agreed that, as far as the interests of 



"Monroe's Memoranda, October, 1817; Hamilton's "Writings of 
James Monroe," VI, 32. 

12 Adams to Monroe, October 8, 1817, MS. Monroe Papers, Li- 
brary of Congress. 



597] 



Monroe's Inquiry. 



75 



France were concerned, there was no immediate necessity 
of publication, justice to the probably innocent cause of the 
whole affair demanded that he be not drawn into it unless 
the active zeal of his partisans should make such a course 
necessary. Since Lee had made his report there had been 
no new developments in the affair. The Tombigbee Com- 
pany was preparing to enter upon its grant, and there was no 
doubt that many of its members considered it a serious un- 
dertaking, whatever designs the more prominent ones might 
have. General Lallemand came to Washington as the presi- 
dent of the Company and asked for an introduction to the 
Secretary of State. Adams refused it. Lallemand then 
went to the Department, introduced himself, and was granted 
an interview. On presenting himself he denied having any 
connection with any project contrary to the laws of the 
United States. Though possessed with an ardent love of 
liberty and a warm sympathy for the South Americans, he 
had persistently refused, he told Adams, to join MacGregor's 
Florida expedition, and other such enterprises, in which he 
had been invited to take part. 13 As to his connection with 
Napoleon, he declared that he had never been the partisan 
of any man, but of his country. If he was an object of 
suspicion to the Government of the United States, he would 
go elsewhere, for he was determined to preserve his per- 
sonal independence. 

Adams informed him that he need have no fear of being 
an object of the slightest uneasiness to the Government, 
but that information had been coming from various quarters 
of a scheme for putting Joseph Bonaparte at the head of 
the movement in aid of the Mexican insurgents. Adams 
then told Lallemand that his name had been connected with 
this affair, so plainly contrary to the laws of the United 



13 Lallemand's letter to Gregor MacGregor, dated " Falls of the 
Schuylkill, July 5, 1817," declining an invitation from MacGregor to 
join his Florida expedition, together with a letter from the brothers 
Lallemand, written from Philadelphia, October 3, 1817, to William 
Lee in reference thereto. Both letters are among the John Quincy 
Adams papers. 



76 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



[598 



States. There was a feeling of uneasiness, the Secretary 
said, on account of the decisive action which must be taken 
by the Government if the French exiles so abused the hos- 
pitality of this country. Lallemand admitted being aware of 
the fears of the French and Spanish ministers, but, he de- 
clared, they were caused by the projected settlement of the 
exiles on the Tombigbee. He had heard of some pretended 
letters from Lakanal to Joseph Bonaparte, but the Count 
de Survilliers had refused to receive them. His refusal, 
Lallemand said, was the cause of their being intercepted. 
He denied knowing Lakanal, " had never seen him, knew 
nothing, whether he had written the letters, whether they 
were forgeries or what they were. But it would be hard 
if the Count Survilliers should be held responsible for letters 
written to him, which he had refused to receive." The 
Secretary makes no commentary in his diary on the truth 
of Lallemand's statements, but he was influenced enough by 
the interview again to discuss the matter with the President." 

The next day after the interview, De Neuville was in- 
formed that the President had deemed it proper to suspend 
the publication of the documents. 15 De Neuville was absent 
from the capital at the time but on his return Adams re- 
viewed the whole affair with him and explained that no 
levies of men had taken place. He thereupon withdrew his 
note of September 24, in answer to De Neuville's of the 12th. 
In its place Adams wrote, December 5, that " whatever ab- 
surd projects may have been in the contemplation of one or 
more individuals, nothing is to be dreaded from them to 
the peace of the United States and the due observance of 
the laws." 16 



14 Adams's Memoirs, IV, 18-20, November 10, 1817 : " General Lal- 
lemand and Mr. Villars have been chosen directors of the French 
Tombigbee settlement, and now Lallemand, who is outlawed, and 
under sentence of death in France, has applied to be presented to 
the President." 

15 Adams to De Neuville, November 10, 1817, MS. Archives, 
Department of State. 

16 Same to the same, December 5, 1817, MS. Archives, Department 
of State. 



599] 



Monroe's Inquiry. 



77 



Replying to this note, De Neuville wrote, " I will inform 
my court, Monsieur, of the motives which determined the 
President to suspend the publication of the documents en- 
closed in my letter of September 12 last. This publication 
becomes after all very indifferent, if, after the measures 
taken, it ceases to be a necessary means of thwarting the 

scheme I will not close without fulfilling a duty 

which the dignity of both our governments and a feeling 
of delicacy, which you will appreciate, impose upon me. In 
my preceding letters relative to this matter, I have mentioned 
the verification of the signatures and of the handwriting." 
If it appeared impossible to give this verification a legal 
character, the authenticity of the documents could never be 
called in question, and on that account, as he wrote the Sec- 
retary, he placed in his hands, " or in the archives of the 
Federal Government, the originals of the two principal 
papers (the Ultimatum and the Report) mentioned in my 

letter of September 12 This frank diplomacy will 

doubtless appear to you, Monsieur, as it does to me, the sim- 
plest and safest way, between two governments whose in- 
terests, when well calculated, can never be disunited." 17 
The " petition " was enclosed with the other documents, and 
the whole bound up among the archives of the Department of 
State. The delivery of the originals showed that De Neu- 
ville considered the incident as closed. Monroe, however, 
still had some doubts of the intentions of the Lallemands 
and the other French officers at the head of the Tombigbee 
Company. 

Nicholas Biddle, one of Monroe's closest friends, was in 
Washington in January, 18 18, 18 and the President asked him 
to keep an eye upon the movements of the Lallemands when 
he returned to Philadelphia. It had been rumored that the 
brothers had been employed by Onis to aid the Royalist 
cause in Mexico and South America. Charles Lallemand 



17 De Neuville to Adams, December 13, 1817, MS. Archives, De- 
partment of State. 

11 Adams's Memoirs, IV, 36. 



78 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [600 



had told John Quincy Adams in their interview some months 
before, that overtures had been made him to join the 
Royalist forces, but that he had laughed in the face of the 
officer who had made him the offer. 19 Biddle wrote Monroe 
February 7, 1818, that he did not believe the Lallemands 
were in the employ of the Spanish Minister, but that while 
Onis knew their plans, they had been betrayed to him. 20 

Some time afterwards Biddle wrote to the President, 
" You recollect our conversation about the Lallemands and 
the speculations as to their designs. From what I can learn, 
the two brothers sailed from New York with two or three 
officers, forming a staff, for Mobile or New Orleans. About 
the same time, a vessel left Philadelphia with nearly one 
hundred and fifty persons, chiefly Frenchmen, who had 
been disciplined and prepared by the Lallemands and were to 
join them. It was said that other vessels from other ports 
would also unite with them at some point, most probably 
in the Gulf of Mexico. The funds for the expedition were 
raised almost entirely by the sale of the lands given to the 
officers and men in Alibama; which were sold at $1 or $1.50 
per acre chiefly to French people here. This fact is very de- 
cisive as to their not going to cultivate vines, and it is equally 
certain that they are destined against some of the posses- 
sions of Spain in South America. 

" The Spanish minister, it is thought, might have induced 
the abandonment of the expedition by paying $12,000, to 
repay the expenses of it incurred before sailing. He would 
not however bid so high. Instead of buying ofT the party, 
he bought only the secret of their destination. This has, I 
presume, been conveyed long since to the local authorities 
in South America, so that the scheme will probably end in 
the ruin of these people, unless they are warned by the fate 
of Mina, and abandon their project." 21 

19 Ibid., IV, 19. 

20 Biddle to Monroe, February 25, 1818, MS. Monroe Papers, Li- 
brary of Congress. 

21 Same to the same, March 5, 1818, MS. Monroe Papers, Library 
of Congress. 



6oi] 



Monroe's Inquiry. 



79 



Several points brought out by this letter tended to confirm 
the President's fears that the conspiracy as outlined in the 
Lakanal documents had not been abandoned. Lakanal had 
said that there was already enrolled a company of one hun- 
dred and fifty, the body of " Commissioners " who were 
already acquainted with the designs of the ringleaders. Lee 
reported that many members of the company intended selling 
out their interests in the projected settlement in order to 
raise money in aid of the Mexican venture. Biddle ascer- 
tained that this had been done and that the officers among the 
French emigrants were to proceed against some of the pos- 
sessions of Spain. Monroe wrote to Biddle on the receipt 
of his account of the plans of the Lallemands, suggesting 
that what appeared to be an expedition against the Spanish 
Colonies, might in reality be one undertaken at the instance 
of Onis, to be directed against the United States. What 
the President suspected as an enterprise against the United 
States cannot be determined, for the letter is not among the 
Monroe papers in the State Department at Washington. 
Monroe may have feared a recurrence of the Amelia Island 
and Galveston episodes within the territory, the cession of 
which to the United States from Spain was then under dis- 
cussion. 

Replying to Monroe's letter, Biddle wrote, March 5, that 
he was certain the Lallemands had undertaken nothing under 
the direction of Onis, though there had been some intriguing 
between them and the Spanish Minister. Biddle thought 
the Lallemands were at that time somewhere in the Gulf of 
Mexico, possibly in the West Indies, waiting " to hear from 
Mr. Onis whether he will even yet give them money to 
engage their services for the Royalists, or go on in favor of 
the Patriots. This conjecture which I have some reason to 
believe, I mention for yourself particularly and exclu- 
sively." 22 



22 Same to the same, March 5, 1818. 



CHAPTER VI. 
Champ d'Asile. 

The month of December, 1817, was a busy time among 
the French exiles at Philadelphia. The settlers of the 
Tombigbee company collected there and sailed for Mobile 
Bay as previously described. Charles Lallemand was still 
the president of the company but he did not accompany 
those of his compatriots who were eager to change their 
military activities for those of agriculturists. Doubtless the 
general, for whose talents for organization Napoleon had 
expressed high regard, was more interested in another expe- 
dition which followed the Tombigbee colonists from Phila- 
delphia within a few days. This second expedition was 
under the leadership of General Rigaud, who had chartered 
the schooner Huntress. A cargo was taken on board which 
could hardly have been of much value in a community so 
entirely peaceful as the one which the Tombigbee society 
proposed to establish. One who sailed under Rigaud re- 
ported that the contents of the schooner seemed fitted rather 
for a mercenary raid than for the settlement of an agri- 
cultural colony, as it comprised in addition to six field 
pieces, six hundred muskets, four hundred sabres and twelve 
thousand pounds of powder, " bought partly with the volun- 
tary contributions of their own and partly with a donation 
of the king, Joseph Bonaparte." 1 

Just when General Charles Lallemand left Philadelphia 

1 " Adventures of a French Captain at present a Planter in Texas, 
formerly a Refugee of Camp Asylum," by " Just Girard," translated 
from the French by the Lady Blanche Murphy, Cincinnati, O., Ben- 
ziger Bros., n. d. While this narrative is partly fictitious and partly 
made up from other accounts, much of it is founded on fact. No 
name of Just Girard appeared on the roster of Champ d'Asile given 
by Hartmann et Millard, Le Texas, ou Notice Historique sur Champ 
d'Asile, Paris, June, 1819. 



6o 3 ] 



Champ d'Asile. 



81 



does not appear. In March, 1818, he was in New Orleans, 
having left a large body of his followers near by, in order 
to purchase supplies for his expedition. 2 Rigaud and his 
company in the Huntress went south from Philadelphia and 
passing around the Tortugas, were in the vicinity of New 
Orleans by the middle of January. Among the passengers 
were Rigaud's daughter and the wives of several of the 
colonists. Near the mouth of the Mississippi the schooner 
was approached by a vessel bearing the Spanish flag. When 
the Huntress was boarded by an officer from it, Rigaud 
learned that the visitor was an " independent corsair " be- 
longing to Lafitte, whose headquarters had been shifted 
from Barataria to Galveston. There seemed to be no cause 
for any hostile demonstration on the part of Lafitte's captain, 
and after an exchange of courtesies both sailed for the coast 
of Texas. 3 

When Rigaud and his associates reached Galveston Lafitte 
not only welcomed them warmly, but assisted them to make 
a temporary camp upon the island. This first installment 
of the colonists remained at Galveston for more than a month. 
While they waited for their general-in chief, who was still 
in New Orleans purchasing supplies, the members of Ri- 
gaud's party had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with 
Lafitte and his pirates. One of the party characterized 



2 J. Q. Adams, Memoirs, IV, 64. De Neuville called upon Adams 
March 18 to talk about the expedition of Lallemand, " who he says, 
has arrived at New Orleans and of their associates who have landed 
at Galveston. He says Onis has protested to him upon his honor 
that he knows nothing of them or their project. I told him he might 
rely upon it that Onis did know something of them. He said that 
as they were Frenchmen and most of them might return to France 
if they chose, it would be equally displeasing to his Government 
whether their projects were against Spain or the United States." See 
ibid., IV, 38-4. Bagot, the British minister, also expressed to Adams 
his anxiety over Lallemand's expedition, fearing that a Bonaparte 
was connected with it, in which case " of course his Government 
would consider it as deserving high attention." 

3 Hartmann et Millard, Le Texas ; Le Champ dAsile au Texas, 

ou Notice curieuse et interessante, par C D , Paris, 1820; 

Le Champ dAsile, Tableau topographique et historique du Texas 
(publie au profit des Refugies) par L. F. L'H(eritier) (de lAin, Tun 
des Auteurs des Fastes de la Gloire), Paris, 1819. 



82 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [604 



Lafitte's crowd at Galveston as " freebooters gathered from 
among all the nations of the earth and determined to put 
into practice the traditions of the buccanneers of old. They 
gave themselves up to the most shameless debauchery and 
disgusting immorality and only their chief, by his extra- 
ordinary strength and indomitable resolution, had the 
slightest control over their wild and savage natures. 
Thanks to him the pirates became harmless neighbors to the 
exiles, with whom they often exchanged marks of political 
sympathy, crying amicably, ' Long live liberty.' " 4 

Early in March General Charles Lallemand arrived. with 
the greater part of the exiles. The company under Rigaud 
had grown tired of the delay upon the barren sand-spit in 
the bay, where there was no trace of cultivation, and they 
hailed Lallemand's arrival with delight. " Songs of glory 
were sung. We drank to our fatherland, to our friends 
who remained there, to our own good-fortune, to the success 
of our enterprise and the prosperity of the colony of which 
we- were the founders." 5 

A week after the arrival of Lallemand, the united company, 
numbering in all about four hundred, left Galveston for the 
place on the Trinity River which Lallemand had chosen as 
the site of the colony. It was a strangely assorted lot, this 
company of colonists. They were for the most part, of 
course, the French exiles and soldiers of fortune recruited 
at Philadelphia. The roster showed that Spaniards, Mexi- 
cans, Americans, and Poles joined with the French in the 
establishment of the colony on the Trinity. Lallemand had 
collected in addition to his compatriots freebooters from 
MacGregor's colony on Amelia Island and pirates who had 
served under Aury and Lafitte. 

The " Pirate of the Gulf " loaned Lallemand twenty-four 
boats and in these, with the guns, ammunitions and supplies, 
the company left Galveston. No sooner had they embarked 



4 Girard, 61. 

5 Hartmann et Millard, 28. 



6o 5 ] 



Champ d'Asilc. 



83 



to cross the bay than their troubles began. A violent storm 
scattered the boats and night fell upon the unlucky voyagers 
scattered over the bay. The next morning found several 
of the boats at the appointed rendez-vous. Others had 
turned back to Galveston. In one boat, five out of six 
colonists were drowned, among whom was Colonel Vorster. 
This disaster so early in the history of the colony was an 
unhappy augury of things to come. 

For three days the company battled with storm and tide, 
until Lallemand and Rigaud decided to divide the party and 
go overland to the chosen site, about thirty miles from the 
Gulf up the Trinity River. Colonel Charrassin, who em- 
ployed some Indian guides, was detailed to bring up the 
food-supplies, ordnance and ammunition. 

The journey overland under Lallemand was as disas- 
trous as the crossing of the bay, for the party was soon lost 
in the forest. Not enough provisions were taken along and 
in a few days the company was so famished that many began 
to hunt for edible plants and fruits in the forest through 
which they passed. A vegetable resembling lettuce attracted 
attention, and without stopping to find out what it was, a 
hundred ate voraciously of the unknown but attractive look- 
ing plant. " Scarcely had they eaten than the deadly nature 
of it was seen. It was a violent poison. A half-hour after 
this fatal repast, every one who had tasted it lay stretched 
upon the ground in awful agony. Generals Lallemand and 
Rigaud and Mann, the surgeon, had fortunately enough 
prudence not to eat the deadly herb though they were nearly 
overcome with hunger. No one could help the unfortunate 
sufferers because all the medicines had been left behind with 
the boats." But, as the ingenuous Hartmann says, " A good 
genius was sent from Heaven to drag our friends from 
death." An Indian suddenly appeared, and was surprised 
to see the men in such a state. He was shown the plant 
which had caused the trouble ; " he raised his eyes and hands 
to Heaven, gave a sorrowful cry, disappeared suddenly and 
then reappeared with some herbs which he had gathered." A 



8 4 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America, [606 



strong decoction of the Indian's antidote quickly revived 
the company, and with blessings upon their benefactor the 
column moved on to the Trinity. 6 

On the sixth day after leaving the boats, Lallemand and 
his followers reached the site of the chosen camp. It was on 
the bank of the Trinity at the edge of " an immense unin- 
habited plain, several leagues in extent and surrounded by a 
belt of woods down to the river. A fruitful soil, an 
abundance of tropical plants and flowers, a river as wide as 
the Seine, but full of alligators, a sky as pure and a climate 
as temperate as that of Naples, — such were the advantages 
of the place we had chosen and which is now christened 
Champ d'Asile." 7 

Having had provisions but for two days and after the 
deadly experience of foraging in the wilds of Texas, the 
colonists arrived half-famished and worn out. The flotilla 
with the provisions preceded the land party and was waiting 
for the general-in-chief to give directions for the establish- 
ment of the colony. 

The first business after the colonists had been divided into 
companies was to plan the fortifications, in which to place 
the pieces of artillery which had been brought up the river 
with great trouble. " Every one worked with a will," Hart- 
mann says, " the generals with the rest. The hours of work 
were from four to seven mornings and evenings ; between 
these hours of work one labored on his own habitation or else 
cultivated his garden. The forts were raised as if by magic 
in a very short space of time. They were of an amazing 
solidity. All the principles of art were observed and the 
fortifications of the celebrated Vauban could have been no 
better." 8 

The fortifications and block houses completed, the colonists 
began to clear small plots of ground for garden purposes. 
Hartmann notices but two agricultural experiments. The 



6 Ibid., 33. 

7 Girard, 62. 

8 Hartmann et Millard, 41 



6o 7 ] 



Champ d'Asilc. 



85 



melon vines grew enormously and tobacco, he felt sure, 
would have succeeded had the colonists remained long 
enough for it to come to maturity. 

" The greatest harmony and order prevailed in the 
colony," again records Hartmann ; " we followed the civil 
and military laws of France." Another member of the 
colony asserted that nothing was allowed to become a law 
until every one had an opportunity to deliberate and to 
express his views upon it. The plans which Lallemand had 
developed were set forth in his manifesto which is dated 
"Champ d'Asile, Texas, May nth, 1818." This document 
is in spirit not unlike the " Ultimatum " of Lakanal. 

"Gathered together by a series of similar misfortunes," the 
manifesto proceeds, " which at first drove us from our homes 
and then scattered us abroad in various lands, we have now 
resolved to seek an asylum where we can remember our mis- 
fortunes in order to profit by them. We see before us a 
vast extent of territory, at present uninhabited by civilized 
mankind and the extreme limits of which are in the possession 
of Indian tribes, who, caring for nothing but the chase, leave 
these broad acres uncultivated. Strong in adversity, we 
claim the first right given by God to man, that of settling 
in this country, clearing it and using the produce which 
nature never refuses to the patient laborer. 

" We attack no one and harbor no warlike intentions. We 
ask peace and friendship from all those who surround us 
and we shall be grateful for the slightest token of their 
goodwill. We shall respect the laws, religion, and customs 
of our civilized neighbors. We shall equally respect the 
independence and customs of the Indian tribes, whom we 
engage not to molest in their hunts or in any other exercise 
peculiar to them. We shall establish neighborly relations 
with all such as shall approach us and we hope to meet them 
in trade. Our behavior will be peaceful, active, and industri- 
ous. We shall do our utmost to make ourselves useful and 
to render good for good. 

" But if it shall appear that our settlement is not respected 



86 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [608 

and if persecution follows us even in the wilds in which we 
have taken refuge, no reasonable man will then find fault 
with us for resisting. We shall be ready to devote our- 
selves to the defense of our settlement. Our resolve is taken 
beforehand. We are armed, as the necessity of our 
position requires us to be, and as men in similar situations 
have always been. The land we have come to reclaim will 
either witness our success or our death. We wish to live here 
honorably and in freedom, or to find a grave which the 
justice of man will hereafter decree to be that of heroes. 
We have the right, however, to expect a more happy result 
and our first care will be to deserve general approbation by 
laying down the principles by which we mean to live. 

" We shall call the new settlement ' Champ d'Asile.' This 
name, while it will remind us of our misfortunes, will also 
express the necessity which we have of providing for the 
future, of establishing new homes, in a word, of creating a 
new Fatherland. The colony, which will be purely agri- 
cultural and commercial in principle, will be military solely 
for its own protection. It will be divided into three com- 
panies each under a chief, who will keep the names of those 
forming his company. A general register compiled from the 
three partial ones will be kept at the central depot of the 
colony. The companies will be gathered into one place the 
better to avoid attacks from without and to live peacefully 
under the eye of authority. A code of laws will be drawn 
up securing personal liberty, the securing of property, the 
repression of injuries, and the maintenance of peace among 
the well-disposed, while it will frustrate the designs of the 
evil." 9 

The colony, with General Charles Lallemand as com- 
mander-in-chief and General Rigaud, second in command, 



9 Niles's Register, 1818. The roster of Champ d'Asile in Hartmann 
et Millard (pp. 51-57), included three women, one of whom was a 
daughter of General Rigaud. See Bertin, Joseph Bonaparte en 
Amerique, 235, quoting from an anonymous pamphlet published in 
Paris, n. d., " Le General Antoine Rigaud, 1758-1820." 



6oo] 



Champ d'Asile. 



87 



was thus divided into three companies or " cohorts." The 
first was commanded by Colonel Douarche, the second by 
Colonel Charrassin, the third by Colonel Defourni. 

Lallemand's manifesto was sent to the United States and 
Niles printed it in full as a remarkable production. In 
Paris, however, it was received with great enthusiasm. 
La Minerve, the organ of the liberals, published Lallemand's 
document and wished the plan success. This journal, which 
as Lamartine said, was conducted by writers who had 
served the cause of despotism under the Empire and could 
not bear the thought of perishing with it, printed moving 
apotheoses of the soldier-laborers in America weeping over 
the loss of their country. " May liberty and happiness grow 
together in Champ d'Asile. May virtue, the constant com- 
panion of temperance and courage, preserve the colony from 
the strivings of ambition and the poisonous breath of 
tyranny." ia 

A public subscription was opened in aid of the colonists 
of Champ d'Asile and La Minerve made a daily report of 
additional subscriptions. The bank of MM. Gros-Davillier 
et cie., Boulevard Poissonniere, No. 15, was designated as 
the depositary of the fund, and the correspondents of 
Davillier at Charleston, South Carolina, were called upon to 
make distribution of the sum collected either in aid of the 
establishment on the Trinity or to assist the individual 
colonists. The subscription was kept open for nearly a year 
and by July the first, 1819, it amounted to a little less than 
one hundred thousand francs. 

Several pamphlets were printed describing the plan of 
the colony and the situation of the adventurers, some of 
which passed through more than one edition. The re- 
ceipts from the sales of these were to be added to the fund in 
the hands of Davillier. Beranger, who wrote for La 
Minerve, composed a song in honor of the colony, and this 



10 La Minerve, 1818, Liv. XXXV, quoted in Le Champ d'Asile, L. 
F. L'H, 150-158. 



88 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [610 

set to music enjoyed a good deal of popularity in the cafes. 
But what became of the fund no one knows. It is certain 
that none of it reached Lallemand while he was at Champ 
d'Asile, for the colony was destroyed and its members 
scattered long before the subscription was closed. Perhaps 
a small part was received by the colonists after they had 
returned to New Orleans, but even this is extremely doubt- 
ful. Balzac doubtless voiced the popular idea in regard to 
the actions of the Parisian sympathizers with Champ d'Asile 
when he called it a disastrous hoax. 

The camp was under the severest military discipline. 
After the work on the forts was completed, regular military 
drills occupied several hours of each day. These were to 
the old soldiers a relaxation from the unusual toil of digging 
in the gardens. At night a watch was kept and the colonists 
gathered about the great fire and discussed their former 
campaigns when the grand army of Napoleon was in its 
glory. " Sometimes General Lallemand would join the 
circle and entertain the veterans gathered under his sway 
with some scraps of his last conversations with the Emperor. 
Often under the influence of the general's eager talk, his 
hearers would indulge in the wildest dreams and imagine 
the most impossible combinations. At such times the settle- 
ment of Texas seemed far enough from their thoughts. 
They were eager to serve under the Mexican flag and to 
help that country throw off the Spanish yoke, after which 
they could easily persuade the Mexicans to give them a 
fast sailor with which to storm the island of Saint Helena, 
carry off the Emperor in triumph, and crown him Emperor 
of Mexico." 11 

It remained for a Bonaparte emperor of France to erect 
an empire in Mexico, long after these dreamers in Texas 
were all in their graves, an empire built upon ideas which 
were as hopeless as were the vagaries of the exiled adherents 
of the greater Napoleon. 



u Girard, 72. 



6n] 



Champ d'Asile. 



89 



While the colonists were building their fortifications on 
the banks of the Trinity and perfecting the organization of 
their cohorts, one of the members thus reported to a com- 
patriot who had returned to France : 12 

" Champ d'Asile, July 12, 1818. 
You have doubtless, my dear Colonel, put 
aside the plans which we formed during those evenings 
which we passed together at Burlington before a ' declined 
majesty' (aupres d'une majeste dechue), those plans which 
were laughed at by Clausel and Lefebvre-Desnouettes as 
well as by Doctor Thornton, the chief of the Patent Office 
at Washington, that old independent who was always enter- 
taining us with a fury of waging war and a mania for making 
constitutions for all the insurgents on earth. 13 Well, that 
project which the ex-king himself regarded as chimerical 
we have just put into execution. 

" The new colony has been founded and the members of 
it assembled at Galveston. I have not the honor of being 
one of the founders, so far as title goes ; I gave my place to 
Rigaud who knew better than I about the resources of the 
country and was therefore more desirable. We have been 
under the greatest obligations to M. de Villeray, governor 
of Louisiana and to Major Ripley, the commander of the 
troops. They have given us many proofs of their good-will, 
M. de Villeray especially. He took poor Humbert home 
with him, for Humbert was at New Orleans in a most 



12 Le Champ d'Asile, L. F. L'H, 195. 

13 Dr. Wm. Thornton was one of the architects of the Capitol and 
superintendent of the Patent Office from 1802 until his death in 
1827. He was an ardent sympathizer with the Spanish-American 
insurgents and his enthusiasm over MacGregor's plan for seizing 
the Floridas put him into disfavor with Monroe. J. Q. Adams, 
Memoirs, IV, 53-55. Thornton had written articles in the news- 
papers (National Intelligencer, Jan. 7, 1818, signed, "A Colum- 
bian"), and had talked with Rush and Bagot, the British minister, 
in favor of MacGregor's schemes. Adams told Monroe that Thorn- 
ton desired a personal interview in order to set himself straight. 
" The President said he would not see him, nor have any conversa- 
tion with him upon anything unless it were patents and very little 
upon them." The papers of Dr. Thornton have recently been ac- 
quired by the Library of Congress. 



90 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [612 

miserable state . The two brothers Lafitte, those 

sailors who avow such an implacable hatred of England, have 
given us marks of the most touching interest. They are 
the ones who, with the privateer, Pire de Nantes and Captain 
Leri 14 (who has shown himself so formidable of late to the 
Spanish), have agreed to bring out at their own expense the 
Frenchmen whom G. . . is to recruit for the colony. They 
have brought us recently three hundred San Domingo colo- 
nists who, in order to join us, have left Charleston where they 
have been for the past twenty years. . . . We have the 
merchant Labatut (with whom you and Lefebvre-Des- 

nouettes lodged) and M. T r to thank for the name 

" Champ d'Asile " for our colony on the banks of the 

Trinity. General H ot, 15 who once dreamed of being 

one of us, advised that our organization should have a more 
pretentious name, but his opinion did not prevail. We 
thought it best to be modest/'. . . . 

The words of Lallemand's manifesto, that the colonists 
would succeed or die in the attempt, were brave enough, but 
events soon proved that even this intrepid general considered 
discretion to be the better part of valor. 

" We ought to have believed," said the confiding Hart- 
mann, " that being at peace with the aborigines of the 
vicinity, we should have nothing to fear from Europeans, 
who like ourselves and without any better title to the soil 
dwelt in those countries. But what was our error! We 
soon learned that the Spanish garrisons at San Antonio and 
at La Bahia, aided by several Indian tribes, allies of the 
Spanish, were marching against us with the intention of 
attacking us, or of forcing us to evacuate Champ d'Asile, 
Galveston, and the province of Texas. Although we were 
few in numbers we were used to battle and to count our 
enemies after we had overcome them. Our first resolution 
was to await the Spaniards with a firm stand and to punish 
them for their rashness. But reflection silenced the first 



14 L'Aury? 

15 Humbert? or Hulot? 



Champ d'Asile. 



9i 



impulse of courage and resolution. Our general told us that 
our provisions were running low, that after having defeated 
the company which was advancing, others would come who 
would invest the camp and force us to surrender or to die 
of hunger. The wise and prudent course was to evacuate 
Champ d'Asile and to retreat to Galveston, the only place 
where we could easily procure food." 16 

Another one of the colonists said that Lallemand was in- 
formed of the hostile intentions of the Spanish by some 
friendly Indians. " The report was circulated about the camp 
that the Spanish detachment consisted of twelve hundred 
cavalry and several pieces of ordnance. It was rapidly near- 
ing us. We had only two hundred men capable of bearing 
arms, the rest (one half of the whole number which had as- 
sembled at Galveston) were sick or disabled. Notwithstand- 
ing this disparity of numbers we determined to repulse the 
foe, to fight them gallantly or die like Frenchmen, as General 
Lallemand pithily expressed it." 17 The leader of this Span- 
ish invading army, the size of which appeared greater the 
farther it remained from the French, was doubtless aware of 
that excellent rule of strategy which is that the enemy is 
as much scared as its opponent. He encamped his troops 
a goodly distance from Champ d'Asile and there remained. 
" The Spanish general," Girard continues, " whether pre- 
vented by secret orders from taking the initiative or deter- 
mined to draw a cordon round us, merely encamped his 
troops within three days march of our camp and waited 
until disease and discouragement should undermine our not 
very formidable body. This manoeuvre could not but be 
successful in the long run and the Spanish general soon 
reaped its consequences. Meanwhile no help came from 
Europe or the United States and we could not fight an enemy 
that seemed determined not to attack. We were obliged to 
beat a retreat, which we accomplished in good order, experi- 
encing no molestation at the hands of the Spanish or remon- 



16 Hartmann et Millard, 72. 
17 Girard, 84. 



9 2 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



[6i 4 



strances from the Indians, who with supreme indifference 
witnessed the departure of their great chief, General Lalle- 
mand. All of us coincided in the advice of our general, who 
had given us so many evidences of his wisdom and prudence. 
We carried our provisions, ammunition and baggage on 
board the boats which lay at anchor in the Trinity. Then 
we bade adieu to our dwellings, to Champ d'Asile, which we 
were forced to leave even before we had time to establish 
our penates in it. We raised our anchors and the currents 
of the Trinity soon brought us to Galveston Bay. Our 
retreat was made in the finest order, without confusion, with- 
out accident, save only the death by drowning of a single 
negro." 18 



18 Hartmann et Millard, 74. 



CHAPTER VII. 
Conclusion. 

From the position of Champ d'Asile, situated in Texas, 
which was claimed both by Spain and the United States 
until the treaty of 1819, it aroused the suspicions of the 
officials of both countries. Upon setting out on his expe- 
dition, Lallemand had printed an address which he claimed 
to have sent to Ferdinand VII, king of Spain. In this 
he stated that he and his followers desired to settle in the 
Spanish province of Texas, that they had no hostile inten- 
tions against Spain, that they would obey the laws and give 
no cause for offense. 

" It is the intention of the French refugees in America 
to establish themselves in the province of Texas," he said. 
" As official proclamations have invited colonists of every 
class and country to settle in the Spanish-American pro- 
vinces, His Catholic Majesty will, no doubt, view with 
pleasure the formation of a colony in a land, which, while 
now a desert, only awaits industrious colonists to become 
one of the most beautiful and fertile countries of the earth. 
The members composing this colony are altogether disposed 
to recognize the Spanish Government, to be loyal to it, to 
help bear its burdens and to pay taxes proportionately to 
its revenues. They ask, however, that they may be govern- 
ed by their own laws, not obeying the Spanish governor, but 
creating their own military system. If the Court of Spain 
acquiesces in their demands, it can count upon their services 
and their fidelity. But if not, they will make use of the law 
which nature gives to every one, that of cultivating the 
wilderness. This right no one can dispute. Their pre- 
tensions in this matter are as well-founded as were those of 
Europeans at the time of the conquest. While the con- 



94 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [616 

querors came but to possess themselves of a free land by 
force, the French come only to cultivate the wilderness. 
They are, therefore, determined, whatever may happen, to 
establish themselves in Texas." 1 

It is extremely doubtful, however, if this impertinent 
document was ever sent. There is no evidence that the 
Spanish minister at Washington knew anything of it. Per- 
haps Lallemand's intention in publishing the paper was to 
free himself from the suspicion that he was organizing an 
expedition, military in character, which appeared to have an 
invasion of Texas as its object. 

Those who were trying to arouse public sentiment in 
Paris in aid of the subscription for Champ d'Asile found no 
difficulty in manufacturing any statements thought to be 
necessary for the furtherance of the plan. While they 
admitted that the possession of Texas was in dispute between 
the United States and Spain, they did not hesitate to praise 
the United States for its generous actions in behalf of the 
French refugees, not only in granting them lands on the 
Tombigbee but also in guaranteeing the stability of the 
colony of the Trinity. 

" The Congress of the United States," the Parisians were 
told, " has not only encouraged the formation of the new col- 
ony, but has given it an unequivocal proof of its good-will so 
as to bear witness to the entirely honorable motives which led 
the French officers to dispose of the lands granted them 
on the Mobile. It has hastened to make a formal declaration 
and has passed an act of formal renunciation in their favor. 
By this act the republic, exercising its right of ownership, 
has by deed of gift made over in perpetuity to the French 
refugees the entire territory of Texas. The integrity and 
inviolability of the territory will be under the protection of 
the military forces of the United States, which will recognize 
and adopt the colonists as allies and give them assistance 
in case of attack. But the republic of the United States 



tLe Champ d'Asile, L. F. L'H., 18. 



6i 7 ] 



Conclusion. 



95 



does not limit itself by the declaration called forth by the 
silence of the cabinet of Madrid ; it has permitted our com- 
patriots to give themselves laws, to govern themselves, to 
elect their own officials, to choose their own flag, and to 
form themselves into a state and nation. In order to make 
them the more independent, the United States merely sepa- 
rated the colonists from its own government much as it had 
previously separated itself from its metropolis. It has 
merely reserved the right to protect and to defend the 
colony." 2 

" The silence of the Court at Madrid " was but a part of 
the imaginative exercise of the editors of La Minerve. The 
condition of affairs in Spain after the invasion by Napoleon's 
army led the United States to refuse to recognize any 
Spanish government as one de facto. In 1809 the Supreme 
Central Junta, acting in the name of the deposed Ferdinand 
VII, sent Don Luis de Onis as minister to the United States. 
He was not received because his commission was issued by a 
mere provisional government. 3 While the crown of Spain 
was in dispute, therefore, the United States preferred to 



2 Ibid., 21. 

3 Onis's opinion of the sentiment of Madison's administration to- 
ward himself and the Spanish Junta is well illustrated by his letter 
to the Spanish Captain-General of Caracas, Feb. 2, 1810 (American 
State Papers, Foreign Relations, III, 404) : " The administration of 
this Government, having put the stamp upon the servile meanness 
and adulation in which they . stand in relation to their oracle, Bona- 
parte, the day before yesterday, by their direction, Mr. Eppes, the 
son-in-law of the former President, Jefferson, made a proposition 
that a minister should be immediately sent to Joseph Bonaparte at 
Madrid. This was supported in the committee in which the House 
then was, by Mr. Cutts, who is the brother-in-law of President Madi- 
son. There were various debates, there were howlings in the tri- 
bunals, there were sarcasms against the Supreme Central Junta, and 
many trifling observations from one party and the other, among 
which mention was made of the arrival of a minister from the 
Supreme Junta, and of this Government's wisely having refused to 
receive him ; and at length, a vote was taken, from which it resulted 

that for the present, no minister was to be sent to Joseph If 

your excellency should not be informed of the mode of thinking of 
the present administration, this will show the little hope there is of 
obtaining anything favorable from it but by energy, by force and 
by chastisement " 



g6 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [618 

remain neutral. After the battle of Waterloo, with the 
Bourbons restored to the throne of Spain, the administration 
had no reason to delay receiving the minister from Spain. 
During the six years of his residence in the United States, 
Onis was engaged in writing voluminous letters to the Secre- 
tary of State, none of which was answered. He then ap- 
pealed to the newspapers, protesting against the violations of 
neutrality of which he claimed the United States was guilty 
in permitting ships to be equipped in American ports to 
war against Spanish commerce. 

In the spring of 1817 a Scotch adventurer, Gregor Mac- 
Gregor, styling himself " Brigadier of the Armies of the 
United Provinces of New Granada and Venezuela and 
General-in-chief of the Armies of the Two Floridas, com- 
missioned by the Supreme ^Directors of Mexico and South 
America," landed at Amelia Island with a small force and 
demanded the surrender of Fernandina. Frightened more 
by MacGregor's pretensions than by his show of force, the 
Spanish commandant capitulated, turning over all his arms 
and ammunition. MacGregor then planned an expedition 
against Saint Augustine and left Amelia Island for Nassau 
to procure reinforcements and supplies.* 

While MacGregor was outfitting at Baltimore for his raid 
on Amelia Island, another adventurer, this time a French- 
man named Louis Aury, had set up the revolutionary flag 
of Mexico at Galveston. Aury, who had escaped from 
Carthagena when the revolutionists surrendered to the 
Spanish fleet, went first to Port-au-Prince. Denied shelter 
there he gathered an ill-assorted company of Frenchmen, 
Americans, Mexicans, mulattoes, and remnants of the old 
Baratarian pirate-crew. With these he established a so- 

4 MacMaster's History, IV, 434; Annals of Congress, volume 32, 
page 1814; Adams's Memoirs, IV, passim, MS. Archives, Bureau of 
Indexes and Archives, Department of State, including blank letters 
of marque issued by MacGregor. For an account of a later adven- 
ture of MacGregor, see "An Account of the late Expedition against 
the Isthmus of Darien, under the command of Sir Gregor Mac- 
Gregor. . . . by W. D. Weatherhead, London, 1821. 



6i 9 ] 



Conclusion. 



97 



called government at Galveston, raised the flag of Mexico 
and, styling himself commodore of the Mexican Republic, 
proceeded to issue commissions to various " privateers." 
These scattered over the Gulf and caused much damage 
not only to vessels flying the Spanish flag, but to those of 
other nations including the United States. New Orleans, 
as the nearest neutral port, became a market for the rich 
cargoes of the vessels condemned as lawful prizes by Aury 
at Galveston. At one time during the summer of 1817, six 
of Aury's ships, all armed, congregated quite unmolested, 
at New Orleans. Five more, commissioned by Bolivar 
and flying the flag of Venezuela, lay in the same port. The 
collector of New Orleans asked that a naval force be sent 
to drive Aury and his followers from the Texan coast as 
there was no evidence that the revolutionary government 
of Mexico had any connection with the establishments, 
which were in fact piratical. 5 

Aury remained at Galveston but a short time and before 
any United States forces reached him, he had transferred 
his forces to Matagorda. Finding the more southerly port 
not to his liking, and perhaps afraid of the Spanish garrisons 
nearby, Aury again shifted his headquarters, this time to 
Amelia Island, there to join forces with MacGregor. When 
he arrived, the Scotch adventurer was absent in search of 
assistance. MacGregor's green-cross flag of " Independent 
Florida " was lowered. Aury raised his own standard and 
declared Amelia Island a part of the Republic of Mexico. 

The island of Galveston had too many advantages of situ- 
ation with reference to New Orleans on the one side and the 
Spanish possessions on the other to allow it to remain long 
unoccupied. As a center from which slaves might be 



6 American State Papers, Foreign Relations, IV, 183-202, 450, 463, 
478; Annals of Congress, volume 32, pages 1523, 1785-1814, 1898- 
1943 ; MacMaster, IV, 435 ; Adams's Memoirs, IV, passim. Aury, 
or L'Aury, was originally a French sailmaker, then a sailor, and 
lived until 1813 in San Domingo, when he joined the revolutionists 
of New Granada as a lieutenant in their navy. Adams's Memoirs, 
IV, 75. 



98 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



[620 



smuggled across to the settled portions of Louisiana, its 
value was undoubted. Within a few weeks after Aury had 
evacuated the island, Lafitte, the old pirate of Barataria, 
who had gained a pardon for his previous misdeeds by his 
loyalty during the recent war, was in possession with his 
fleet of vessels euphemistically styled " independent cor- 
sairs." It was indeed but a re-establishment of the Bara- 
taria band, somewhat further removed from the reach of 
justice. 

Such was the condition of affairs when Congress met in 
December 18 17. Monroe called attention to Amelia Island 
and Galveston. The first was, he said, within territory 
which was the subject of negotiation with Spain, " as an 
indemnity for losses by spoliation or in exchange for terri- 
tory of equal value westward of the Mississippi, a fact 
well known to the world." The Galveston enterprise, he 
said, was marked by all the objectionable features which 
characterized the other, and more particularly by the equip- 
ment of privateers and by smuggling. " These establish- 
ments, if ever sanctioned by any authority whatever, which 
is not believed, have abused their trust and forfeited all 
claim for consideration. A just regard for the rights and 
interests of the United States requires that they be sup- 
pressed and orders have accordingly been issued to that 
effect. The imperious considerations which produced this 
measure will be explained to the parties whom it may in 
any degree concern." 6 

The one most concerned in the matter was, of course, 
the Spanish minister. Upon the publication of Monroe's 
message Onis asked for an explanation of the attitude of the 
United States toward the so-called piratical establishments. 
So far as Monroe's message referred to Amelia Island, Onis 
reminded Adams that he had called attention to Mac- 
Gregor's movements and had asked that he be prohibited 
from fitting out his expedition in the United States. In 



6 Monroe's Message; Richardson's Messages, II, 13. 



621] 



Conclusion. 



99 



reference to Galveston, it was not, nor had it ever been, a 
part of Louisiana. Spanish authority should accordingly 
be respected there. He further claimed that the Royalist 
troops had driven the freebooters out of Matagorda and 
Galveston. Neither of these places, he said, had since been 
attacked or infested by banditti ; " moreover, if by the occu- 
pation of Galveston the United States has sustained injuries, 
it is notorious that Spain has suffered greater by the facili- 
ties afforded to the pirates in capturing Spanish vessels, 
carrying them into Galveston and there selling them to the 
citizens of this Union; that from this magazine of plunder 
they conveyed Spanish property to New Orleans and other 
parts of the United States in American vessels, as is well 
known to you, Sir, and to all the world." 7 

Amelia Island ceased to be a matter of dispute, for when, 
towards the end of December, 1817, Commodore Henley in 
the ship John Adams arrived off Fernandina and demanded 
possession, Aury made no opposition. While surprised at 
such aggressive measures towards a nation like Mexico, 
with which the United States was at peace, Aury declared 
that he had " too much respect and esteem for the people 
of the United States to carry matters to extremities." 8 
Lafitte remained at Galveston, as has been seen, and his 
establishment there continued to flourish; 

Onis's activities were again directed to the discussion of 
the boundary question. Soon after his reception as minister 
he had sent a note to Monroe, then secretary of state, in 
which he proposed an adjustment of all existing differences 
between the two countries, but demanding as a condition 
precedent to any discussion of matters in dispute the 
immediate withdrawal of the United States from West 
Florida, a part of which the United States had occupied 

7 Onis to John Quincy Adams, December 6, 1817, American State 
Papers, Foreign Relations, IV, 450. 

8 Aury to Henley, December 22, 1817, Annals of Congress, volume 
32, page 1805. 

L ef 0. 



ioo The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [622 

under Madison's proclamation of 1810. 9 Monroe informed 
Onis that the United States might in the same spirit demand 
the withdrawal of Spain from the territories east of the Rio 
Grande, to which the United States considered its right 
established by well-known facts and the fair interpretation 
of treaties. So long as it was the intention of Spain to make 
the title to West Florida a subject of amicable negotiation 
why, Monroe asked, should not such a negotiation be carried 
on while the United States occupied it as well as if Spain 
were in possession ? 10 Onis's answer to this query began the 
almost interminable discussion of the limits of the Louisiana 
purchase to the south and west which was finally concluded 
by the execution of the treaty of 18 19. During the three 
years of the negotiation West Florida remained under 
American control, while in the country east of the Rio 
Grande what authority any nation exercised was nominally 
at least, exercised by Spain. 

Growing tired of a negotiation which seemed to consist 
only of arguments for and against the various limits claimed 
by the parties to the discussion, Adams offered to close the 
matter by proposing that Spain cede all her claims to the 
territory east of the Mississippi and that the Colorado should 
be the boundary on the west. The American claim to the 
Rio Grande was thus seen to be dropped as a sine qua non? 
Onis declined Adams's proposition on the ground that the 
United States asked Spain to cede territories not only to 
the east but also to the west of Louisiana without any 
adequate compensation, but he suggested as a counter propo- 
sition that the dividing line between Louisiana and the 
Spanish possessions on the west be established in one of the 
branches of the Mississippi, either that of La Fourche or 
the Atchafalaya, Spain giving up West Florida. As an 
alternative he proposed that the uti possidetis of 1763 be 

9 Onis to Monroe, December 30, 1815, American State Papers, 
Foreign Relations, IV, 422. 

10 Monroe to Onis, January 19, 1816, ibid., 424. 

11 Adams to Onis, January 16, 1818, ibid., 463. 



623] 



Conclusion. 



101 



made a basis, the line to be at the Arroyo Hondo, that is, 
east of the Sabine. Finally claiming to have misunderstood 
what river was meant by the Colorado, the Spanish minister 
postponed further negotiations until he had more explicit 
instructions from Madrid. 12 

So far, _ therefore, as the settlement of the boundary 
question was concerned, both Spain and the United States 
were in about the same position in which they had been prior 
to the rupture of diplomatic relations in 1808. The position 
of the United States, however, had been weakened so far 
as concerned the territory to the east of the Rio Grande by 
the offer of Adams to fix the boundary at the Colorado, 
as well as by the terms of Wilkinson's " Neutral Ground 
Treaty " of 1806. While Onis was waiting for instructions 
as to Adams's offer, Lallemand's company landed at Gal- 
veston and proceeded to make a settlement on the Trinity. 
The island of Galveston was thus within territory which both 
Spain and the United States claimed though neither ex- 
ercised actual authority over it. 

The Spanish minister did not complain to Adams of the 
landing of the Napoleonic refugees at Galveston. It was 
against the apparent violation of the recently enacted neu- 
trality law that he protested, basing his complaint upon the 
same ground as he did many former protests against the 
arming and equipping of vessels in American ports by the 
Spanish-American revolutionists. The French adventurers, 
he said, were receiving at Galveston a considerable number 
of recruits and large supplies of military stores from the 
ports of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah. Seeing 
in Lallemand's expedition the development of the plan to 
put Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of Mexico, Onis remon- 
strated to Adams against the enrollment of men to go to 
Galveston. 

12 Onis to Adams, January 24, 1818, ibid., 464 ; Wilkinson's " Neu- 
tral Ground Treaty," or, properly, armistice of 1806, placed the 
boundary at the Aroyo Hondo, while Spanish authority was not to 
extend east of the Sabine. See McCaleb's " The Aaron Burr Con- 
spiracy," passim. 



102 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [624 

" Convinced, however, as I am," Onis wrote to Adams, 
" that nothing is more remote from the intentions of the 
President than to tolerate hostile expeditions within the 
territories of the republic directed against powers with 
which it is in a state of profound peace, I cannot for a 
moment doubt that His Excellency will take into his most 
serious consideration what is due the demand now made by 
me in the name of my sovereign, that Joseph Bonaparte, the 
Generals Lallemand and other Frenchmen now residing in 
this country, be compelled to keep themselves within the 
bounds prescribed by the hospitality and generosity with 
which they have been received, and prevented from con- 
tinuing to organize expeditions for the purpose of invading 
the territory of His Catholic Majesty and disturbing the 
peace enjoyed by his subjects." 13 

Shortly after writing this note to Adams, Onis called to 
take leave as he was about to take up his residence for the 
summer at Bristol, Pennsylvania. He referred during his 
call to his note concerning the French settlement at Gal- 
veston. " I told him," Adams records in his diary, " that 
he knew more about it than we did ; that we might perhaps 
send troops to break up the establishment and the possession 
of the place as being within our territory, but that he had 
objected to such a measure heretofore. He said he thought 
such measures unnecessary, and they certainly would be 
so now, as the Viceroy of Mexico wrote him that he had 
eighty thousand men under his command. Upon which I 
laughed heartily. ' You laugh,' said Onis, ' at my saying the 
Viceroy has eighty thousand men.' ' No,' said I, ' but I was 
thinking how easily the Viceroy with that army will dispose 
of a hundred and fifty Frenchmen under Lallemand.' ' But,' 
said Onis, ' there are two thousand of them.' ' My word 
for it,' said I, ' not two hundred.' ' Well,' said he, ' as for 



13 Onis to Adams, May 7, 1818, American State Papers, Foreign 
Relations, IV, 494. 



625] 



Conclusion. 



103 



the Viceroy's eighty thousand men, I do not vouch for them, 
but so, I assure you, he writes to me.' " " 

Although Onis's note was not answered, Monroe's 
administration proceeded at once to interfere with the 
occupation of any part of Texas by the French under 
Lallemand. 15 Within a few weeks after Onis's note was 
received, Adams sent George Graham, who had been chief 
clerk and acting secretary of war during the last two 
years of Madison's administration, to Galveston for the 
purpose of finding out exactly what Lallemand's expedition 
amounted to. Adams's letter of instructions dated June 2, 
18 1 8, was as follows : 

" The landing at Galveston, of a number of adventurers, 
understood to be chiefly Frenchmen, and partly consisting 
of those to whom lands had been granted on the Tombigbee, 
the uncertainty and obscurity in which their objects are 
involved, the character of the expedition, and its military 
array, accompanied by the disavowal of hostile intentions 
against any country, and by the pretense of a purpose to form 
a settlement merely agricultural, the mystery with which 
the whole transaction has been surrounded, and the false 
colors which it has assumed, have suggested to the President 
the expediency of obtaining by the means of a confidential 
person upon the spot such further information, as it may 
be useful to the public interest that he should possess, and 
of observing such precautions, as may be necessary to prevent 
an encroachment upon the rights of the United States. 

" It is known that projects of a wild and extravagant char- 
acter contemplating the invasion of Mexico, for the purposes 
of co-operation with the revolutionary party there were en- 
tertained, by some individuals among the French Refugees, 
thro' the greatest part of last year. Altho' the Govt, rec'd 
from various sources information of the projects, they had 
never acquired a maturity upon which it appeared probable 

"Adams's Memoirs, IV, 100. 

15 The matter was discussed in cabinet meeting. May 13. Adams's 
Memoirs, IV, 97. 



104 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [626 

that the attempt would be made to carry them into execution. 
Their ostensible objects constantly varied; but they were 
all marked by features of absurdity and of desperation. In 
the first the name of Joseph Bonaparte was implicated, tho' 
without positive proof that he had personally lent himself to 
it; and afterwards altho' two Notes of remonstrances 
against them, have been rec'd at this Dept. from the Spanish 
Minister Onis, yet more than one indication has reached us 
that the expedition was ultimately concerted with him, and 
was executed with his consent if not with his sanction. 
This concert in which it can scarcely be doubted that the 
object of each party was to dupe the other, has however 
according to all probability been the immediate occasion of 
the occupation by these persons of Galveston. 

" The President wishes you to proceed with all convenient 
speed, to this place ; unless, as is not improbable, you should 
in the progress of the journey learn that they have 
abandoned, or been driven from it. Should they have 
removed to Matagorda, or any other place North of the Rio 
Bravo, and within the territory claimed by the Ud. Ss., you 
will repair thither, without however exposing yourself to be 
captured by any Spanish military force. When arrived, 
you will in a suitable manner make known to the chief or 
leader of the expedition, your authority from the Govt, of 
the U. S. ; and express the surprise with which the President 
has seen possession thus taken without authority from the 
U. S. of a place within their territorial limits, and upon which 
no lawful settlement can be made without their sanction. 
You will call upon him explicitly to avow, under what 
national authority they profess to act, and take care that due 
warning be given to the whole body, that the place is within 
the U. S., who will suffer no permanent settlement to be 
made there, under any authority other than their own. 

" At the same time you will endeavor to ascertain the 
precise and real object of the expedition ; the numbers of the 
persons already there; the sources from which they have 
derived the means of defraying the expenses of their under- 



627] 



Conclusion. 



105 



taking; and those from which they expect future aid and 
support. You will notice especially any thing which may 
tend decisively to ascertain whether any part of their funds 
are supplied by Joseph Bonaparte, or by Mr. Onis, or by 
both ; and whether they have had intercourse with the Vice- 
Roy of Mexico. Your own judgment may suggest other 
objects of enquiry, upon which information may be desirable, 
and which you will report to this Dept. as you may find con- 
venient occasion. It is supposed your return may be 
expected in the course of three or four months. Your 
reasonable expenses, together with a compensation of five 
dollars a day, will be allowed, from the day of your 
departure to that of your return." 18 

At Galveston the American agent, or " Commissioner " as 
Hartmann called him, 17 met the colonists of Champ d'Asile, 
weakened by the unusual conditions of their wilderness 
camp and having little of the appearance of a formidable 
military expedition dangerous to the United States or to 
Spain. The " Napoleonic Confederation " of Lakanal, 
" judiciously calculated in all its details," which had so 
alarmed De Neuville, and the trio of military " cohorts," 
of which Lallemand boasted in his manifesto, turned out to 
be a sorry handful of weary and destitute foreigners, more to 
be pitied than feared. Graham had nothing to do. After 
a consultation with Lallemand, the two left for New Orleans. 
The chief of the expedition announced that his departure was 
for the purpose of soliciting aid in New Orleans, and he 
promised to bring food and provisions to his comrades, 
who were to wait in Galveston until he returned. 

Graham was back in Washington in November, 18 18, and 
gave Adams a verbal account of his mission. The diary 
records that the agent had a sort of negotiation with Lalle- 
mand and Lafitte from which it appeared that Lallemand's 
case was desperate. " Graham's transactions with Lafitte, 



"Adams to Graham, June 2, 1818, MS. Archives, Department of 
State. 

17 Hartmann et Millard, Le Texas, 81. 



io6 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [628 

as related by himself, did not tally exactly with my ideas of 
right and they were altogether unauthorized. He says 
Lafitte told him that he had commissions for his privateers 
from the Mexican Congress, but that they were like Aury's 
commissions, and he (Graham) advised him to take a com- 
mission from Buenos Ayres, and gave him a letter to De 
Forrest at New York, to assist him in obtaining one, and 
that Lafitte took his advice and immediately despatched a 
man to New York for that purpose. Now, I should not be 
surprised if we should hear more of this hereafter, and not 
in a very pleasant manner. But it is all of Graham's own 
head, and, in my opinion, not much to the credit of his 
wisdom. He is for taking immediate possession of Gal- 
veston and so am I ; and he has persuaded the President that 
we have offered Spain too much in consenting to take the 
Sabine for the boundary at the Gulf of Mexico. He thinks 
we should go to the Brazos de Dios. The President wrote 
me a note suggesting a wish that I should send Onis as soon 
as possible as answer to his last letter, and, as he had rejected 
the western boundary offered as our ultimatum, the United 
States must no longer be bound by it." 18 

The departure from Galveston of Lallemand and his staff 
aroused the suspicion that he might be abandoning his fol- 
lowers and that he did not mean to return. Rigaud now 
assumed the command of the refugees, who still preserved 
an organization having a semblance of military order and 
discipline. While Rigaud was held in great personal esteem, 
the departure of Lallemand took away from the refugees 
their last hope. Discipline was at an end. " Every one 
thought only of his own personal safety and to ward off 
hunger." 19 ' 



18 Adams's Memoirs, IV, 175. No written report upon Graham's 
mission can be found in the State Department archives. 

19 Hartmann et Millard, Le Texas, 82. After the death of Joseph 
Bonaparte in 1844, memories of the Lallemand expedition were re- 
vived. C. J. Ingersoll printed in part Adams's letter to Graham 
in Niles's Register for January 4, 1845, with some prefatory remarks 
in which he said that while Joseph Bonaparte gave money to the 



62Q] 



Conclusion. 



107 



From now on these colonists from Champ d'Asile led a 
most miserable existence. The few who had money bought 
provisions from the pirates at exorbitant prices. Those who 
had none were forced to barter their clothes and ammunition 
for bread. Each day their situation became more desperate, 
and had it not been for Lafitte, who aided them with food as 
he had aided Lallemand with money before that general left 
for New Orleans, some of the company who were absolutely 
destitute must have died from hunger. And now came word 
from the Spanish authorities that they must quit Galveston 
as they had done Champ d'Asile. " We refused," said Hart- 
mann, " and told the Spanish emissary that the general-in- 
chief was absent and that we could not leave without his 
orders. When Lallemand returned we would treat with 
him. After that the emissary departed and we heard noth- 
ing more of the matter." 20 

The elements did what the Spanish had neglected to do. 
In September, 1818, a furious storm broke over the island of 
Galveston. A flood like that of 1900, which devastated the 
modern city of Galveston, engulfed the low lying island 
and swept all before it. After a fearful windstorm which 
rose suddenly in the night, the waters of the Gulf rushed 
in, the waves broke with fury over the sandspit and inun- 
dated the town. The camp and huts were submerged to a 
depth of four feet. The next morning showed the town of 
Galveston in ruins. Walls were tumbled down, and but 
six houses on the island, one of which was occupied by 
Lafitte, were left intact. 

Hunger and thirst tortured the wretched beings for two 
days. Lafitte's squadron, two brigs, three schooners and a 
felucca, which had been riding at anchor in the bay, was 
scattered and lost. All the cisterns had been filled with salt 
water and there was no way to bring fresh water from the 



Lallemands, he refused to have anything to do with the scheme for 
putting him on the throne of Mexico. Bertin, Joseph Bonaparte en 
Amerique, 222. 
20 Hartmann et Millard, 84. 



108 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [630 

mainland. In the debris was finally found a small boat. 
Volunteers rowed across the bay, fresh water was procured 
and with what little provisions remained, the company rested 
and discussed plans for leaving the island. 

They surely had reason for wanting to be away from 
Galveston and Texas. " Some wished to join the inde- 
pendents (Lafitte's pirates), others wanted to go to New 
Orleans and other cities of the United States, but France 
was the longed-for goal of most of us." To leave Galveston, 
however, was immediately necessary. To remain was to die 
of hunger and misery, so a large part of the refugees crossed 
to the mainland and proceeded to New Orleans on foot. 
After weeks of hardship these weary soldiers straggled into 
New Orleans, there at last to hear a warm welcome in their 
own tongue. 21 

Those who remained behind, Rigaud and his daughter 
among the number, again had Lafitte to thank for his 
assistance. Some time after the storm one of the pirate's 
ships brought a Spanish prize, the schooner San Antonio 
from Campeachy, into Galveston harbor. This schooner 
Lafitte placed at the disposal of the refugees. " After hav- 
ing put aboard all the provisions which Lafitte could spare, 
we sailed with a Spanish captain and ten sailors whom he 
had freed. Unfortunately, we were beaten about by contrary 
winds and our provisions were about exhausted. Not until 
after twenty days did we see the Balize and the mouth of 
the Mississippi. We ascended the river and finally joined 
our unhappy comrades who had preceded us to New Or- 
leans." Lallemand had left and his associates of Champ 
d'Asile, most of them without money or anything but the 
tattered clothes upon their backs, found merciful aid at the 
hands of the Creoles of New Orleans. " Bons Creoles I" 
wrote Hartmann, ec les refugies du Texas n oublieront jamais 
que vous futes pour eux que des freres, plus que des amis! " 22 



21 Ibid., 85-101. 

22 Ibid., 107. 



63i] 



Conclusion. 



From New Orleans most of the refugees finally returned 
to France. A few, aided by Lefebvre-Desnouettes, may 
have gone to the Tombigbee, there to join the unsuccessful 
colony in which that general continued to take an interest. 
The experiment of the French agricultural society was an 
expensive one for him and he saw his private fortune of 
twenty-five thousand dollars sunk in it without any return. 
By the will of his former master, who died at Saint Helena 
while Lefebvre-Desnouettes was still faithfully assisting in 
the plans of the Tombigbee company, he received a bequest 
of one hundred thousand francs. Upon hearing of this 
final mark of appreciation from the great Napoleon, the old 
general left the wilds of Alabama and proceeded to Europe. 
When off the coast of Ireland, the ship Albion in which he 
had sailed, foundered in a storm and sank with all its passen- 
gers. 

The fortunes of the brothers Lallemand after the disaster 
of Champ d'Asile were very diverse. The younger married 
a niece of the rich Stephen Girard before the company for 
Champ d'Asile left Philadelphia. At the wedding were 
present Charles Lallemand, the Count de Survilliers, 
Marshall Grouchy and General Vandamme. 23 There was 
reason enough therefore, for Henri Lallemand not joining 
the expedition of which his brother was the head. The 
younger Lallemand was, however, in New Orleans during 
the year 1818, for he published at that place a treatise upon 
artillery which had some vogue in its day. He afterwards 
returned to Philadelphia and settled down at Bordentown as 
a neighbor of Joseph Bonaparte and died in 1823. 

Charles Lallemand returned to Europe and fought with 
the liberals in Spain. He was taken prisoner and appears 
next in Belgium, where he lived for a time in great poverty. 
Next he is heard of as having a school in the United States. 
Such an occupation, it may be believed, was foreign enough 
to his tastes, and the Revolution of 1830 gave him the oppor- 



Niles's Register, XIII, 166. 



no The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [632 

tunity of changing for a more agreeable activity. He no 
longer had reason to fear the sentence of death which had 
been passed upon him in 181 5. He went to Paris and carried 
with him a letter to Lafayette from Joseph Bonaparte, with 
whom he was still on friendly terms. By Napoleon's will 
he had been left one hundred thousand francs. Lallemand 
took his seat in 1832 as a member of the French Council of 
peers. Later he was made military commander of Corsica. 
Thus Lallemand, ever faithful to Napoleon's interests, at 
last received his reward and had the military command of 
the island where his great leader was born. The comman- 
der-in-chief of the company of Champ d'Asile died at Paris 
in 1839. 

General Rigaud was also a beneficiary to the extent of a 
hundred thousand francs under the will of Napoleon, who 
called him " Martyr de la Gloire," but the old soldier died 
before he knew of his good fortune. He remained at New 
Orleans and died there in 1820. 

Most of the other more distinguished French officers, who 
assembled at Philadelphia after Waterloo, at last returned to 
their native land and many of them appeared again in civil 
and military life, both before and after the Revolution of 
1830. Before the end of the year 181 7, Clausel and Grouchy 
had announced to Hyde de Neuville that they wished to 
return to France and serve the restored government. Clausel 
was amnestied in 1820 and seven years later was named as 
deputy by the liberal electors of Rethel. 

Of the fate of the humbler members of Lallemand's Champ 
d'Asile it is less easy to speak. Some, like Hartmann and 
Millard, returned to France, thanks to their Creole friends 
in New Orleans. Others joined Lafitte and served in his 
" independent corsairs." Still others went south to Mexico 
and joined the revolutionists. The company was scattered 
to the four winds of heaven. 

Lakanal's history of the United States was not completed. 
He never returned to his retreat in Kentucky, but after the 
dissolution of the Tombigbee company settled in New Or- 



633] Conclusion. 



in 



leans. He was not enrolled among the adventurers of 
Champ d'Asile, but returning to a more congenial occupation, 
became president of the College of Orleans at New Or- 
leans. This position he retained but a short time. The Uni- 
versity of Orleans was the first institution for higher educa- 
tion which had been founded since the cession of Louisiana 
from France. A few years after its founding, in 1805, it 
struggled on with but few pupils. By the time Lakanal was 
placed in charge, in 1824 or 1825, the original plan of a uni- 
versity had been abandoned and, aided by lotteries and the 
revenues from licensed gambling houses, it was hoped that 
the institution might prosper under the more restricted plan 
of a college. But Lakanal's appointment seems to have 
given great offense to the people of New Orleans, probably 
owing to the fact that he was, as Hyde de Neuville had said, 
an apostate priest. After a few months of service he gave 
up his position and moved to Mobile Bay. There he lived 
until 1837 and then returned to France. Some of his fam- 
ily, however, remained in New Orleans and continued to 
live there. After Lakanal resigned the presidency of Or- 
leans College, the institution rapidly declined and soon ceased 
to exist. 24 

At Paris Lakanal was once more in an atmosphere to his 
liking. He resumed his position in the Institut de France 
and became its dean. During his last years he was engaged 
in the preparation of a narrative of his life in America dur- 
ing twenty-two years. Strangely enough, the manuscript 
disappeared at the time of his death in 1845, an d has never 
been recovered. Perhaps in it was an account of his con- 
nection with the Napoleonic Confederation of 18 17. 

With the passage of the neutrality act of 1818, the ports 
of the United States ceased in large measure to be used for 
the fitting out of privateers against Spain. The treaty of 
1819, ratified in 1821, ceding East and West Florida to the 



21 History of Higher Education in Louisiana, from Gayarre ; King, 
New Orleans, the Place and the People, 185. 



H2 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [634 

United States and leaving Texas to Spain, put an end to 
enterprises such as MacGregor and Aury had at Amelia 
Island, Lafitte at Galveston, and Lallemand on the Trinity. 25 
A few years only after Spain had been confirmed in her 
title to Texas, she lost it again to Mexico. Champ d'Asile 
as a colonial institution was forgotten. The genius of Bal- 
zac has kept the memory of it alive in connection with the 
character of Philippe Bridau. In prose we read of the un- 
fortunate dupes who sought in the wilderness of Texas a 
chance to build again upon the shattered glory of the great 
Napoleon. 

LE CHAMP D'ASILE. 

Un chef de bannis courageux, 

Implorant un lointain asile, 
A des sauvages ombrageux 

Disait : " L'Europe nous exile. 
Heureux enfants de ces forets, 

De nos maux apprenez l'histoire; 
Sauvages, nous sommes Francais ; 

Prenez pitie de notre gloire. 

"Elle epouvante encor les rois, 

Et nous bannit des humbles chaumes 
D'ou, sortis pour venger nos droits, 

Nous avons dompte vingt royaumes. 
Nous courions conquerir la Paix 

Qui fuyait devant la Victoire. 
Sauvages, nous sommes Francais ; 

Prenez pitie de notre gloire. 

"Dans l'lnde, Albion a tremble 

Quand de nos soldats intrepides 
Les chants d'allegresse ont trouble 

Les vieux echos des Pyramides. 
Les siecles pour tant de hauts faits 

N'auront point assez de memoire, 
Sauvages, nous sommes Francais ; 

Prenez pitie de notre gloire. 



25 Recognition of the South American republics followed closely 
after the ratification of the Florida treaty. Delay in the recognition 
of these republics by the United States was caused by Spain's dila- 
tory conduct in ratifying the treaty. See Paxson, The Independence 
of the South American Republics. 



635] 



Conclusion. 



"3 



" Un homme enfin de nos rangs, 

II dit : ' Je suis le dieu du monde.' 
L'on voit soudain les rois errants 

Conjurer sa foudre qui gronde, 
De loin saluant son palais, 

A ce dieu seul ils semblaient croire. 
Sauvages, nous sommes Frangais ; 

Prenez pitie de notre gloire. 

"Mais il tombe; et nous, vieux soldats 

Qui suivions un compagnon d'armes, 
Nous voguons jusqu'en vos climats, 

Pleurant la patrie et ses charmes. 
Qu'elle se releve a jamais 

Du grand naufrage de la Loire! 
Sauvages, nous sommes Frangais ; 

Prenez pitie de notre gloire." 

II se tait. Un sauvage alors 

Repond : "Dieu calme les orages. 
Guerriers ! Partagez nos tresors, 

Ces champs, ces fleuves, ces ombrages. 
Gravons sur l'arbre de la Paix 

Ces mots d'un fils de la Victoire : 
Sauvages, nous sommes Frangais ; 

Prenez pitie de notre gloire." 

Le Champ d'Asile est consacre; 

Elevez-vous, cite nouvelle ! 
Soyez-nous un port assure 

Contre la Fortune infidele, 
Peut-etre aussi des plus hauts faits 

Nos fils vous racontant l'histoire, 
Vous diront : Nous sommes Frangais ; 

Prenez pitie de notre gloire. 26 

In such wise the romantic Beranger, in his lines written in 
aid of the subscription, idealized the project and won it from 
the rugged path of history into the more alluring field of 
poetry. And there we may leave it. 



26 Oeuvres de Beranger, edition of 1837, II, 16. 



APPENDIX. 



The Proposed Cession of Texas and the Floridas by 
Joseph, King of Spain and the Indies, 1811. 1 

" It was the Spanish ulcer which ruined me," confessed 
Napoleon at Saint Helena. His determination to overthrow 
the Bourbons in Spain, made during the summer of 1806 
while on the march to Jena, was not executed until Junot had 
occupied Portugal, more than a year thereafter. 2 Joseph 
Bonaparte was a factor in the Spanish program neither from 
choice nor from inclination. When he was taken from the 
throne of Naples for that of Spain his personal wishes were 
not regarded by the Emperor. All during the time from 
1808 to 18 1 3, while the imperial army was attempting to hold 
Spain, the Bonaparte king was a puppet. Letters from Na- 
poleon to Joseph during this period are filled with fault- 
finding. Napoleon complained that Joseph was slow, indis- 
creet, and timid. After Vittoria, Napoleon wrote to Cam- 
baceres that all the follies in Spain were due to the mistaken 
confidence shown the king, who not only did not know how 
to command, but did not know his own value enough to leave 
the military command alone. 3 Thus Joseph was made the 
scapegoat for the failure of a mistaken policy. The course 
of events elsewhere in Europe determined the history of the 
attempted conquest of the Peninsula. The occupation of 
Spain and the invasion of Russia were the result of that 
insane ambition which Friedland and Tilsit did much to 
nourish. 

Joseph, taken unwillingly from Naples, seems from the 
first to have felt the impossibility of his position as king of 



1 The original documents cited in this Appendix are in the custody 
of the Bureau of Rolls and Library, Department of State, Washing- 
ton. 

2 Rose, Napoleon, II, 137, 139. 

3 Quoted by Rose, II, 287. 



637] 



Appendix. 



"5 



Spain. He was, he said, king only by the force of Napo- 
leon's arms. 4 That such was his position he was made to 
feel more keenly when Spain was divided into military prov- 
inces under the absolute control of the Emperor, the com- 
mander of each province being virtually independent of the 
king. Soon after the decree of division was made, Joseph 
wrote to Queen Julie that " if the Emperor wishes to disgust 
me with Spain, I wish for nothing but to retire immediately. 
I am satisfied with having twice tried the experiment of 
being a king ; I do not wish to continue it." 5 This was fol- 
lowed by a protest to the Emperor against the policy of di- 
verting the Spanish revenues, especially those of Andalusia, 
to the support of the army. If he was to be deprived of this 
income, he said, he had nothing further to do but to throw 
up the game. No longer a free agent, his every deed spied 
upon, distrusted by Napoleon and his generals in Spain, 
Joseph was further harassed by lack of money. If the reve- 
nues of Andalusia were to be taken from him, he would then 
be virtually a prisoner at Madrid, which city afforded him 
but eight hundred thousand francs a month, while the ex- 
penses of the court were never less than four millions. 
Placed in such a humiliating, hopeless, and dishonorable po- 
sition, he begged that he be allowed to return to France, to 
find in obscurity a peace of which the throne had robbed him 
without giving anything in exchange. " The step which I 
take is involuntary. I send to your majesty M. Almenara, 
who has been my minister of finance since the death of M. de 
Cabarrus, and who knows the wretched details of his own 
office and of those of the other ministers, so as to enable your 
majesty to act with full knowledge." 6 

The American legation at Paris was entrusted to Jonathan 
Russell in September, 1810, after the departure of General 



* Memoires du Roi Joseph, February 19, 1809. 

5 Ibid., April 12, 1809. 

6 Ibid., August 8, 1810. The following spring Joseph went to 
Paris and tendered to Napoleon his resignation of the crown. Na- 
poleon ordered him back to Madrid. Rose, II, 194. 



n6 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [638 



Armstrong, who took home with him the promise of Cadore 
that the Berlin and Milan decrees would be revoked, as to 
the United States, on the first of November following. 7 Upon 
that day Russell asked if the decrees had been repealed. 
No answer was made to the question and the matter dragged 
until the following summer. 8 Madison acted as if the prom- 
ise to revoke was in fact a revocation. Russell was trans- 
ferred to London in July, 181 1, and Joel Barlow sent to Paris 
as minister. This appointment, which Madison hoped would 
save his administration, had been made some months pre- 
viously, but Madison was unwilling to send a minister to 
France until he had more exact knowledge that the decrees 
had been revoked. Serurier, the French minister at Wash- 
ington, who had frequently urged Madison to send Barlow 
to his post, now gave what the President deemed satisfactory 
assurances of the revocation. Barlow arrived at Paris Sep- 
tember 19, 181 1. 

While Russell was waiting for some act on the part of 
Napoleon which would be in line with Cadore's promise "to 
Armstrong, the Marquis of Almenara, who had been sent by 
Joseph to Paris to acquaint the Emperor with the desperate 
state of affairs at Madrid, approached the American charge 
with a plan by which the financial necessities of his master 
might be relieved. By the treaty of 1803 the limits of Lou- 
isiana were left undefined. The terms of the Bourbon abdi- 
cation, arranged by Godoy and Napoleon, stipulated that the 
dominions of Spain should be kept intact. The cession of 
Louisiana was a sufficient precedent that good faith was not 
to stand in the way of pressing military or financial needs. 
Almenara proposed that if certain grants were made in the 



7 Cadore to Armstrong, July 15, August 5, September 7, and Sep- 
tember 12, 1810; Armstrong to Cadore, August 20 and September 7, 
1810. American State Papers, Foreign Relations, III, 386-388, 400. 

8 McMaster, III, 360-368, 406-411. The decree revoking the earlier 
decrees as to the United States, bearing date of April 28, 181 1, was 
unquestionably manufactured a year later. H. Adams, History, VI, 
254-263. American State Papers, Foreign Relations, III, 613-614. 
War with Great Britain was declared June 18, 1812. 



639] 



Appendix. 



117 



interest of Joseph, a new treaty would be negotiated in which 
the limits of Louisiana would be set forth so as to include 
both Texas and the Floridas. 8 Russell transmitted Almen- 
ara's proposition together with the draft of a convention 
based thereon to Madison, who declined giving any consider- 
ation to it. Barlow had read Russell's letter upon the sub- 
ject before leaving for Paris and was therefore aware of 
Madison's opinion of a transaction which would involve the 
recognition of the Bonapartist rule in Spain. Almenara's 
plan, amended so as to avoid any appearance of fraud, was 
proposed to Barlow, who thereupon wrote to Madison 
strongly advising him to adopt it and thereby acquire Lou- 
isiana and the Floridas. Madison again refused. Soon 
afterwards the war with Great Britain began, and Madison 
had other matters to look after. 

During nearly all of the year 1812 Barlow was beguiled by 
Maret, Due de Bassano, with the hope of a treaty. In March 
the American minister wrote to Monroe that he hoped soon 
to find Bassano ready to negotiate. A month later he con- 
fessed that he was again disappointed. " This is dull work,"" 
he said, " hard to begin and difficult to pursue." 10 Napoleon's 
invasion of Russia intervened. Borodino was fought Sep- 
tember 7, and Moscow entered a week later. At about the 
time when Napoleon determined to retreat from Russia, 11 
Bassano asked Barlow to come to Wilna to reopen negotia- 
tions. Barlow accepted the invitation and left Paris Octo- 
ber 26. 12 The journey from Paris was one of three weeks' 
duration over roads ruined and through lands desolated by 
the march of the Grand Army. Barlow waited at Wilna 
hoping that if Napoleon retreated thither, there would be a 
chance of saving the treaty. By the fourth of December 



9 Madison's proclamation taking possession of West Florida was 
dated October 27, 1810. American State Papers, Foreign Relations, 
111,397- . 

10 American State Papers, Foreign Relations, III, 520. 

11 Rose, Napoleon, II, 239. Bassano to Barlow, Wilna, October 
11, 1812. American State Papers, For. Rel., Ill, 604. 

12 Todd, Life and Letters of Joel Barlow, 270. 



n8 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [640 

news came of the disaster at the Beresina and of the flight 
of Napoleon. It was no time for what to the Emperor was 
such a diplomatic trifle as a treaty with the United States. 
Barlow left the day before Napoleon reached Wilna and 
turned back towards Paris. The journey was one of fright- 
ful hardship, quite beyond the strength of a man so advanced 
in years. Taken ill on the road, he was compelled to halt at 
Zarnowitch, a small town near Cracow. The illness proved 
fatal and Barlow died December 24, a martyr to the Russian 
campaign of Napoleon. 13 

In Spain Joseph's position became more and more perilous. 
By the battle of Vittoria, June 22, 1813, the French cause 
was irretrievably lost. In December, Napoleon wrote to 
Joseph : " France is invaded, all Europe is in arms against 
France, and above all, against me. You are no longer king 
of Spain. I do not want Spain either to keep or to give 
away." 14 

The following letters, hitherto unpublished, give an ac- 
count of the attempt made to give Texas and the Floridas to 
the United States in return for grants of land. These grants 
were to be sold and the proceeds used to bolster up the throne 
of Joseph Bonaparte in Spain. It is to be remembered in 
connection with these letters that Napoleon, as early as De- 
cember 13, 18 10, just before Russell broached the subject to 
Madison, expressed his willingness to see not only the Flor- 
idas belong to the United States, but also South America 
independent of Spain. 15 Shortly before the arrival of Barlow 
at Paris, Napoleon instructed the Due de Bassano that the 
United States might easily acquire the Floridas on account 
of the poverty-stricken condition of Spain. " Though I do 
not take it ill that America should seize the Floridas, I can in 



13 For an account of Barlow's last days, see Todd, Life and Letters 
of Joel Barlow, 270-287 ; Henry Adams, History, VI, 245-267. 

14 Memoires du Roi Joseph, December, 1813. 

15 Napoleon to Champagny (Cadore), December 13, 1810, Corre- 
spondance de Napoleon, XXI, 316, quoted by Henry Adams, History, 
V, 383. 



64i] 



Appendix. 



119 



no way interfere, since these countries do not belong to 
me." 18 

I. Russell to Madison. 17 

Paris 2nd January 181 1. 

Sir 

The inclosed is a sketch of a treaty and convention which, after 
much conversation between the Marquis of Almanara his agents and 
myself, was drawn up and contains in my opinion the most favour- 
able terms on which can be obtained an extinguishment of the title 
claimed by the actual king of Spain to the whole of the territory 
therein mentioned. The Marquis of Almanara appeared in this 
business to act from a conviction that this territory was beyond the 
reach of his master and that it was no longer in his power to main- 
tain its dependence on the Spanish throne. Pride and perhaps pov- 
erty forbid him however to abandon it without a valuable considera- 
tion and the end of his conferences with me was evidently to ascer- 
tain what in my opinion was the maximum which the United States 
would be willing in existing circumstances to allow for it. On my 
part I endeavored to depreciate its value — and the title which King 
Joseph could give to it. From the first I adhered to two leading 
principles, — viz., that the right of the United States to the territory 
between the Perdido and the Sabine should not be called in question 
and that for the cession of Florida to the eastward of the Perdido 
an equivalent should be found in the vacant lands of the territory 
thus ceded and in the vacant lands of the disputed territory laying 
between the Sabine and the Rio Bravo. This basis being settled the 
quantity and location of the land to be reserved by the King of 
Spain formed the principal subject to be discussed. The result of 
this discussion will appear in the place of the convention herein 
inclosed. 

I have reason to believe that the Marquis of Almanara proceeded 
in this business with the knowledge of the Emperor. In the course 
of it I was sorry however to perceive the agency of two men whose 
established character for extensive speculation might render sus- 
picious the fairest negociation. These two men were David Parish 
and Daniel Parker, — the reputation of the first I believe to be un- 
blemished but it is said the second has sometimes made those sacri- 
fices to interest which honest men avoid. This man had the indis- 



16 Napoleon to Maret, Due de Bassano, August 28, 1811, Corre- 
spondance de Napoleon, XXII, 448, quoted by Henry Adams, His- 
tory, V, 408. 

"MS. Madison Papers, Bureau of Rolls and Library, Department 
of State. 



120 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [642 

cretion to observe to me one day that he expected a handsome share 
in the transaction and looking at me significantly " I intend " says 
he " that all my friends who aid in the operation shall be provided 
for " I felt too well his meaning but passed coldly to another part 
of the subject. I endeavoured to appear to disregard it. I am how- 
ever to this moment puzzled to decide whether the Marquis of Al- 
manara originated at this time the discussion and sought these men 
for agents to raise funds out of the reserved lands, — or whether 
they originated it and brought him forward merely to aid in their 
purposes of speculation. To decide this however cannot be im- 
portant as far as it does not affect the terms of the bargain. I 
satisfied myself that the twenty-five millions of acres were to be 
converted into money for the Spanish Government but that the seven 
millions were to be used as a bonus for Alamanara and his coadju- 
ters in court in obtaining the ratification of the treaty and for the 
gentlemen above mentioned. The loan was partly also to be dis- 
tributed in this way and partly to be appropriated to surveying the 
land. I have no doubt that two millions of dollars down would 
procure all the title which King Joseph can give to the Floridas 
and run our boundary line from the mouth of the Bravo to the mouth 
of the Cumberland. 

It does not become me to give an opinion upon the propriety of 
treating with him and thereby recognizing him as King of Spain and 
in doing so provoke perhaps hostilities with the Regency and its 
allies but I have felt it my duty to lay before you either directly or 
indirectly all that I may learn or in which I may be concerned while 
I am charged with the affairs of the American legation here. In 
my conversations with the Marquis of Almanara I distinctly and 
repeatedly declared to him that I was without the shadow of authority 
to treat for the Floridas or any other territory and that whatever I 
might agree to would not even be entitled to the notice much less to 
the sanction of my government. On his part also he avowed that 
he was without authority but he said that he would take the project 
of the treaty and convention to Madrid and lay it before his King. 
He left here a few weeks since and we have already learned of his 
arrival at Valadolid. 

I should have written on this subject by the Commodore Rogers 
but I feared, should she fall into the hands of the English, that the 
discovery of my conversation with Almanara might lead to unpleas- 
ant consequences. I do not address myself to the Secretary of State 
as I do [not care] to give what I have done an official character — 
but I communicate it to you only, knowing it to be my duty to reveal 



643] 



Appendix. 



121 



every circumstance of my conduct and hoping, if I be guilty of any 
indiscretion, that I shall be judged with indulgence. 
I am sir with the highest respect 

Your faithful and obt servant 

Jona Russell 

N. B. I ought to have said to you that the Marquis of Almanara 
is Minister of Interior to King Joseph 

II. Convention between the United States of America 
and the King of Spain. 18 

The President of the United States of America and his Most 
Catholic Majesty the King of Spain in consequence of the treaty 
which has been this day signed between A. B. charged with the 
affairs of the American Legation near the Government of France on 
the part of the United States and by C. D. on the part of his Most 
Catholic Majesty the King of Spain and desiring to regulate defini- 
tively every thing that has relation to that treaty have agreed to the 
following articles — 

ist His Most Catholic Majesty the King of Spain having granted 

E. F. his heirs and assigns seven millions of acres of land 

with the right to locate six millions, five hundred thousand acres 
thereof in any place between the River del Norte or Bravo, and the 
river Sabine and the remaining five hundred thousand acres thereof 
in any part of the Floridas east of the River Perdido saving and 
excepting the island of Amelia. 

And his Majesty having in like manner made a further grant to 
the same E. F. to his heirs and assigns of twenty five mil- 
lions of acres of lands with the right to locate the whole thereof 
in any place or places between the rivers del Norte and the Sabine 
not to the north of 34 of north latitude, provided, that no location 
in virtue of either of these grants shall be made of a less quantity 
than five thousand acres or on lands already improved or lawfully 
located, — the United States promise and agree to ratify and confirm 
said grants and to issue their warrants within six months after the 
ratification of this Convention by the United States and as much 

sooner as possible — to the said E. F. or to his assigns for 

the complete location thereof — each warrant to be for five thousand 
acres of land and for the grant of seven millions of acres to be num- 



18 Enclosed with Russell's letter to Madison of January 2, 181 1, no 
date, MS. Madison Papers. This project is not in Russell's writing, 
but in a foreign hand. 



122 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [644 

bered from 1 to 5,000 and each of these warrants shall give to the 
holder thereof a right to the five thousand acres mentioned therein 
and be transferred from one holder to another by indorsement with- 
out guaranty — 

2d The expense of surveying the land to be located under either 
of the grants aforesaid shall be borne and defrayed by the grantee 
or his assigns. And the return of the Surveyor shall be transmitted 
to the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States under whose 
inspection a lottery shall be drawn to determine the location of each 
warrant and immediately thereafter the Government of the United 
States shall issue patents in the usual form to be applied to their 
correspondent numbers as determined by the lottery aforesaid. 

3. The United States agree to loan to the said E. F. 

one million of Dollars in a stock bearing an interest of six per cent 
per annum to be paid half yearly at the treasury of the United 
States, the said stock to be issued immediately by the United States, 
and to be redeemable in fifteen years thereafter, the amount of this 
loan and the interest thereon to be reimbursed to the United States 
from the first sales of any part of the tract of land which may be 
located under the grant of twenty five million of acres, it being dis- 
tinctly understood that for the payment of this stock with the inter- 
est that may grow due thereon, in manner and form aforesaid, one 
half of the warrants, or the patents for which they may be ex- 
changed, shall remain in the possession of the Secretary of the 
Treasury of the United States until the whole of the said payment 
be fully made and completed. Provided nevertheless that nothing 
herein contained shall be construed to render the said grantee per- 
sonally liable for the payment of any part of this loan or the interest 
that may grow due thereon. 

4 It is mutually agreed between the contracting parties that the 
United States shall have full right and authority to grant and locate 
after the expiration of two years from the issuing of the warrants 
above described any vacant lands in East Florida that shall not have 
been previously located under the grants of seven millions of acres 
above named and also full right and authority to grant and locate 
lands between the rivers del Norte and Sabine after the expiration 
of five years from the issuing of the warrants aforesaid which shall 
not have been previously located under either of the grants men- 
tioned in this Convention. It being fully understood and agreed that 
nothing contained in this Convention shall be construed to impair the 
right of the United States to grant and locate, immediately after its 
ratification, any lands laying between the rivers del Norte and Sabine 
to the North of the 34 of north latitude. 



645] 



Appendix. 



123 



III. Projet of a Treaty of Limits. 18 

The President &c. 
Whereas &c. 

Art. 1. It is settled and agreed that the line dividing the Spanish 
Territories in South America from the Territory of the United 
States, shall begin at the mouth of the Rio del Norte in the Gulph 
of Mexico, and proceed by right bank of said river to the mouth of 
the Rio Pecos in lat. 30 8' north as laid down in the chart of 
Humboldt, thence due north to the fortieth degree of north lat, 
thence in a straight course to the most southerly source of the Mis- 
souri, thence in a straight course to the most southerly source of the 
river Columbia and thence following the left bank of said river to 
the Pacific Ocean in 46 north latitude. 2. All the territory laying 
north of this line or between it and the Atlantic Ocean and bounded 
South by the Gulph of Mexico and the straights of Florida to be pos- 
sessed and enjoyed forever in full sovereignty by the United States, 
with all its rights and appurtenances, whether the said territory has 
been before the date hereof ceded to the United States or not, — or 
whether it has been supposed heretofore to have been included in 
the limits of Louisiana and East and West Florida or not — the 
King of Spain hereby solemnly renouncing in favor of the United 
States all right and title both of domain and sovereignty to every 
part and parcel of said territory. 

Art. 3. As rights and appurtenances of the territory above de- 
scribed are to be considered all the islands adjacent thereto or be- 
longing either to Louisiana, the Floridas or any other district of said 
territory, as well as all public lots and squares, vacant lands and all 
public buildings, fortifications, barracks and other edifices which are 
not private property. The archives, papers and documents relative 
to the domain and sovereignty of said territory or any part thereof, 
which have not already come to the United States in execution of 
their treaty of the 30th April 1803 with France, shall be delivered by 
the officers of Spain in whose hands they remain, to any agent or 
agents whom the President of the United States may appoint to 
receive them. 

Art. 4th. The United States shall have a right immediately after 
the ratification of this treaty to take full complete possession of 
every part and portion of said territory of which they are not already 
possessed and all the military posts now commanded by the officers 
of Spain within said territory shall be surrendered and delivered 
over to any officer or officers whom the President of the United 
States may authorize to receive them. 



"Enclosure B. in Russell's letter of January 2, 181 1. 



124 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [646 



Art. 5. All grants of land made within the territory aforesaid by 
the Government of Spain or in its name or under colour of its au- 
thority since the treaty concluded between France and Spain at St. 
Ildephonso on the first of October 1800 shall and are hereby declared 
to be null and void, and the lands described in such grants shall 
belong in full property to the United States, the same as if such 
grants had never been made whether the districts in which such land 
lays was- supposed to be ceded by the said treaty of St. Ildephonso 
or not. Save and except such grants of land only as are specified in 
the Convention of this date entered into by the contracting parties. 

Art. 6. The inhabitants of the territory above described shall be 
entitled to the benefit of all the provisions contained in the 3d Ar- 
ticle of the treaty concluded at Paris between the United States 
and the French Republic whether they dwell within the limits of the 
territory supposed to be ceded by that treaty or not. 

Art. 7. The particular Convention signed this day by the con- 
tracting parties respectively having relation to certain grants of land 
made by Spain and excepted in the 5th article of the present treaty 
and also to a loan to the grantees of that land, is approved and to 
have its execution in the same manner as if it had been inserted in 
the present treaty and it shall be ratified in the same form and at 
the same time so that the one shall not be ratified without the other. 

Art. 8. The present treaty shall be ratified and approved by his 
Catholic Majesty and the President of the United States and the 
ratifications shall be exchanged in good and due form in the space 
of six months from this day, or sooner if possible. 

IV. Madison to Russell, July 24, 181 1. 21 

Washington, July 24, 181 1. 

Sir— 

I have rec'd your letter of Jany 2 with the sketch of a convention 
arranged between you and the Marquis Almanara. The purity of 
your views is attested by the guarded manner of your proceeding, 
as well as by the explanations in your letter. But it is proper you 
should be apprized, that such a transaction would be deemed inad- 
missible on different grounds, were it without the feature given to it 
by the individual agencies and interests so justly denounced by you. 

For information on other subjects which it may be interesting to 
you to receive I refer you to the communications of the Secretary of 
State. 

Accept, Sir, my respects and friendly wishes. 

J. M. 



21 MS. Madison Papers, Department of State. Endorsed by Madi- 
son : " Russell Jonathan. Copd." 



6 4 7] 



Appendix. 



125 



V. Barlow to Madison. 22 

Paris 19 Dec 181 1. 

Private 
Dear Sir 

As an additional apology for detaining the Frigate as well as for 
"believing that an answer somewhat satisfactory is to be given to my 
note of the 10th Novr. I ought perhaps to state to you more fully 
than I have done in my official letter what past at the diplomatic 
audience to which I there alluded. It was on the 1st of Deer, the 
anniversary of the coronation. The Court was uncommonly bril- 
liant and the emperor very affable. 

In passing around the circle, when he came to me he said with a 
smile "Eh bien Monsieur vous saurez done tenir contre les Anglais." 
— alluding as I suppose to the affair of Rodgers then recently pub- 
lished. 23 "Sire nous saurous faire respecter notre pavilion." Then 
after finishing the circle he cut across and came back to me in a 
marked manner and raising his voice to be heard by hundreds he 
said "Monsieur vous avez presents une note interressante au due 
de Bassano, on va y repondre incessament et d'une maniere satis- 
faisante 2i et j'espere que la frigate restera pour cette reponse." 
"Sire elle ne reste que pour cela" 

In the evening there was a drawing room, in which he singled me 
out again and said some nattering things, but not on public affairs. 
As it cannot be on my own account, but on that of the Government, 
it is proper I should notice to you that he and all the grand digni- 
taries of the empire have taken pains to signalize their attentions to 
me in a manner they have rarely done to a foreign minister, and 
never to an American. 

The points that I expect will be conceded are — 1st a diminution of 
duties on our produce to take place not all at once but gradually. 
2d. The right of transit thro' France into the interior of Europe for 
all our produce without any duties in France but what may suffice 
for the expences of bureaux. — 3d. a revocation or modification of 
the system of special licences. — 4th. releasing the vessels and car- 
goes not sold, and an arrangement for paying damages for those 
already disposed of. 25 This last article perhaps connected with an 
explanation of the treaty of St. Ildefonso, both by the Spanish and 



22 MS. Madison Papers, Department of State. 

23 The encounter of the " President " and the " Little Belt." 

24 Barlow's note was answered December 27, but in a manner by no 
means satisfactory. 

25 Barlow's expectations were of course not realized. H. Adams, 
History, VI, 245-258. 



126 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



[6 4 8 



French Governments, relative to the boundaries of Louisiana, so as 
to comprehend all that we desire eastward and westward and north- 
ward. — More of this probably in a private letter by the Frigate. I 
give no encouragement to the idea. 

A war with Russia seems to be resolved upon notwithstanding the 
peace signed between her and Turkey. Preparations are great and 
probably serious on both sides. 

With great respect and attachment 
Yr obt St 

J. Barlow. 

VI. Barlow to Madison. 26 

Paris 30 Dec 181 1 

Private 
Dear Sir 

In my private letter to you of the 19th I took the liberty to inti- 
mate that I might address you by the frigate on the subject of con- 
necting the indemnities due to our citizens with a convention of 
boundaries of Louisiana. 

I have had many hints on this subject both from Spanish and 
French authority. I have always discouraged the idea by a declara- 
tion as general and vague as might be, that I am not instructed by 
my government, and therefore can say nothing that shall draw to 
any sort of consequence. 

I thought it not prudent to make any specific exception to any 
part of the proposition, such as the right of the party ceding, the 
value of the proposed cession or the conditions on which it might 
be made. Thus reserving the power of being consistent with myself 
in case any circumstances should induce propositions that in your 
opinion ought to preclude such exceptions. 

Here is a Spanish agent of rank who has formerly been minister 
at home and ambassador in France, and who now enjoys the confi- 
dence of both governments. He is charged with full powers by 
King Joseph to negotiate and conclude a convention of boundaries 
with the French or American authorities on terms, as he thinks, so 
advantageous to the U. S. that their government cannot refuse them. 

In repeated conversations with this person I have collected the 
substance of the convention that he and the French government will 
probably agree to. Indeed, he would have proposed them before now 
had he supposed they would be accepted, or even discussed. I did 
not let him know that I should reduce them to writing or propose 



MS. Madison Papers, Department of State. 



649] 



Appendix. 



127 



them to you in any shape. I have however put them on paper as pre- 
cisely as I can methodize the ideas, and I now take the liberty to 
lay them before you with some observations that have occurred to 
me as worthy your attention. 

I assume as a general principle that it now becomes more than 
ever important to the peace and interest of the U States that the 
limits of Louisiana should be fixt and acknowledged by all parties 
concerned. The present appears the most favorable moment to do 
this, for reasons which will apply more or less to each of those 
parties. 

1st Spain. King Joseph is in want of money, and the sum he will 
get out of the six millions of dollars [acres?] the first grant men- 
tioned in the project, is represented as a great object to him at this 
moment. 

It cannot be long before a change will take place in his situation. 
He will either cease to be King of Spain by the effect of a union of 
that country to France ; or his power as King of Spain will become 
more consolidated, when a million or two of dollars will be of less 
consequence to him; or, remaining K of S while Mexico shall be 
acknowledged independent, he will have no legal power to establish 
the limits in question. 

He is now to all intents and purposes of public law the legitimate 
King of Spain, acknowledged by every power of Europe except Eng- 
land, and she is at war with him. The treaty of St. Ildefonso is 
well known to have been left defective as to the limits of the territory 
therein ceded. It requires explanation. J[o]seph, as King of Spain, 
is the only power that can (in concert with France) explain that 
treaty and define those limits. And no other power or people has 
a right to complain, provided their acknowledged rights are not 
thereby invaded. 

Spain as a power, whoever is her King owes the citizens of the 
U S considerable indemnities for captured property. This is a 
certain way, a legal way and the only way in which such indemnities 
can be had. It will be well viewed in Spain and in the U S ; and 
the terms thus obtained by our citizens will be so much recovered as 
if from the bottom of the sea: for it would be folly to expect pay- 
ment in any other way. The change of dynasty in Spain since the 
debts were contracted would be a sufficient pretext for refusing 
payment, if a constant refusal for ten or fifteen years preceding 
that change had not already reduced the claimants to a desperate 
silence. 

2d France. This being the only power with which we contracted 
for Louisiana it is to the emperor alone that we can look for an 
explanation of its limits. By the convention of 1803 we receive 



128 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [650 

that territory from France with such limits as she receives it from 
Spain. And the emperor in the convention of boundaries now pro- 
posed explains the former convention with the same authority with 
which he made it. This he offers to do now, but there is no prob- 
ability that he will do it at a later period, because he will not have 
the same inducement. It is well known that he now has the double 
motive of paying his own debts to our citizens and relieving his 
brother Joseph from pecuniary embarrassments. Without these mo- 
tives he probably would not have listened to the project now brought 
forward. He owes our citizens a considerable sum, probably from 
four to six millions of dollars. Whatever may be his means he cer- 
tainly has not the intention of paying them in any other way. We 
know how difficult it is to draw money from his coffers at any rate 
for the best acknowledged debts when not so circumstanced that a 
refusal to pay would immediately clog his military operations. And 
in a case like this, when he can risk nothing but the animadversions 
of a few Diplomatic notes and the censure of American newspapers, 
he will feel such a perfect impunity in refusing to pay by any direct 
drain upon his treasury, that he will probably never think of it. 

Indeed I am assured of this, not only from his conduct in common 
cases, but by the private declaration of his intentions, as I am told, 
in this particular case. 

3d England. The government of England expressed in a formal 
manner its acquiescence in our purchase of Louisiana. And it can- 
not pretend that the party who had the right to cede had not the 
right to fix the limits of the cession. 

By your message to Congress of the 5th November it seems that 
England is interfering with your operations in one of the Floridas. 
What this interference may be I know not, for I have seen no other 
document but that message. She probably does this on the ground 
that such territory was not included in the cession. But when she 
sees that the same powers that made the cession acknowledge that 
such territory was included therein, then that pretext at least is re- 
moved; and if after that she persists in meddling with this affair it 
must be on other grounds than those of obtaining justice for a pre- 
tended ally, and she may be opposed by other arguments. 

4th Mexico including the provinces between that and Louisiana. 
These provinces have never yet formed an organized power capable 
of declaring a national will. It has all along been contended by us, 
and never contradicted by them, that our western limit was the Rio 
Bravo. But whether we own the country or not, the Mexicans cer- 
tainly do not own it. 

According to the received doctrines of public law and colonization 
the government of Spain was the only power that had the right 



65i] 



Appendix. 



129 



to form and declare the limits of provinces in that region. Spain 
had a right to buy and sell these provinces as well as fix their limits. 
Spain had before bought Louisiana. She has lately sold Louisiana 
and she now declares what Louisiana is. 

But the provinces now in insurrection to the west of the Bravo, 
to say the most of their rights, have no rights beyond their own 
limits, neither is it the interest of Mexico to extend her boundary 
farther to the east. If any power or people in those territories are 
to be consulted it is that which I am going next to mention. 

5th The people living in the ceded lands. We find that the 
people of Louisiana living on the Mississippi and in West Florida 
have acquiesced and rejoiced in becoming part of us and belonging 
to the U States. There is every reason to believe that those of East 
Florida and those of Texas &c. partake of the same sentiments. But 
these dispositions may change in a short time after they shall have 
formed other connections and other habits, incompatible with the 
union now proposed. 

This is the moment of revolutionary ideas in all those colonies. 
It is therefore the most proper moment, to settle them down in 
habits and attachments that may be permanent. 

It is remarkable that the whole business of Louisiana has been 
hitherto conducted without shedding a drop of blood. It has done 
honor to our government as well as to the people in question. But 
the limits being yet unsettled there must, at no distant day, be a 
a breaking up somewhere; and it would be more convenient, more 
safe and probably more peaceful to have it done now, before the 
lands are much peopled, and before local interests and habits become 
inforced by local power. 

6th The United States Their object is to live in peace with all 
the world, and to cultivate those natural advantages which ought to 
secure their greatest happiness as a nation. For this purpose they 
should be sufficiently populous and powerful to be able to feel that 
they can at all times do justice, as well as command it, without any 
other effort than that of founding a national will. It is only in 
habits of justice, that those of peace can be established, and the best 
security for both in the case now in question is to settle those great 
frontier discussions before they shall appear to be great, and while 
all the other parties concerned are more willing or more complying 
than they ever can be hereafter ; especially before some of them shall 
case to have the right, and we ourselves cease to have the power. 

7th Your administration. Excuse me, my dear sir, if I reckon 
this among the parties concerned. A desire to render your adminis- 
tration popular is a sentiment of patriotism, and not merely of 
friendship and attachment to you ; and the expression of this desire 



130 The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [652 

is not flattery it is not a profession of love to you but to the coun- 
try. You were called to administer the Government at a time when 
there existed a great moral struggle betwen republican principles 
and their opposite. The contest is of awful magnitude, and is not 
yet decided. 

Its decision depends greatly on your success ; and I have accus- 
tomed myself to regard the triumph of your administration as 
identified in some measure with that of our constitution. 

This you may think is taking a strong hold of the subject, and I 
cannot but perceive a great cause of congratulation and triumph 
in the indemnities to so many of our citizens as are involved in the 
proposed arrangement; especially do I perceive it in the peaceable 
acquisition of so great an additional territory and fixing the limits 
of several thousand miles of our most contested frontier, and this 
cheaper than was ever expected and of much greater extent. Indeed 
I cannot foresee any probable time when, or principle on which, the 
western and northwestern boundary of that country will be settled, 
if not terminated now. 

On the whole you are doubtless more familiar with the subject 
than I am, and know better, how these terms compare with what 
you have before offered and what you have tried to obtain. I have 
understood that the sum you offered was far greater, and the limits 
you demanded were far less. In fact you here give nothing [.] You 
allow the party to retain six millions of acres out of the two hun- 
dred millions he gives you beyond what you were willing before to 
consider as your limits. 

I recollect the paper you showed me last summer containing the 
proposition submitted by Mr. Russell. The present one differs 
from that, as well as I recollect it, in a variety of respects. 1st it 
takes in a much greater territory than that did, even four degrees 
of latitude from the middle of the continent to the south sea. 2d. 
It indemnifies your citizens, and a very clamorous class of them, to 
the amount of forty two millions of Francs. 3d. It admits grants 
of land upon you to a less amount by twelve millions of acres ; his 
proposal being, if I remember right, thirty-two millions, this twenty 
millions. 4th The state of Europe is different from what it was a 
year ago, and admits more readily the legality of Joseph's power. 
5th the most striking difference perhaps is in the manner of the 
transaction. That had the appearance of a new grant in which the 
right of the grantor might be scrutinized ; this is nothing but an 
explanation of an old grant ; an explanation by the only power on 
earth, that can now explain it, and a grant that all the world knows 
was left unexplained, has need of explanation, and must and will 
lead to disputes, probably to war, if left much longer unexplained. 



653] 



Appendix. 



My duty seems to require that I should state to you one fact, at 
least what I believe to be a fact, that in this transaction there is 
no corruption or underhand dealing in contemplation. The Spanish 
Agent has no under agents. He assures me in the most solemn 
manner that King Joseph is in great distress for money for his 
domestic expences, and that he will really receive every dollar that 
can be raised out of the six millions of acres. And that the loan 
is to enable him to live till he can get the land surveyed and in a 
state to settle for his sole account. 

This agent will doubtless be well paid; but farther than that I 
believe the negotiation proposed is just what it purports to be. 
Should you think proper to pursue this business under any modifi- 
cations that would not greatly change the substance, I should not 
despair of obtaining them. 

You will judge of the propriety of giving me as speedy an answer 
as may be, as I expect this agent will not long delay to make his 
proposition in form, or if not, his master may forbid anything further 
to be said about it. 

With great respect and 

Attachment yr. obt. sert. 

J. Barlow. 

Enclosed with Barlow's letter to Madison were the fol- 
lowing memoranda : 2 ' 

" Spain acknowledges that the boundaries of the country ceded 
to France under the general name of Louisiana by the treaty of St. 
Ildefonso was not clearly defined in that treaty. And as doubts 
have arisen and disputes may hereafter arise with respect to the 
precise boundaries intended, she now declares as a supplimentary 
article to said treaty that the country therein ceded to France is 
bounded as follows. — 

First beginning at the mouth of the Rio Bravo sometimes called 
rio del Norte in the Gulph of Mexico and running eastward and 
southward with the coast of North America bordering said Gulph 
till it joins the Atlantic Ocean, thence Northward with the coast of 
North America bordering said ocean to the mouth of the river St. 
Marys which now forms the boundary of the State of Georgia, com- 
prehending all Islands both of said ocean and said Gulph within 
three leagues of said coast of North America in the extent above 
mentioned. Next beginning at the mouth of the sa'id rio Bravo and 



27 MS. Madison Papers, Department of State. Endorsed in pencil 
"Barlow J. 1811." The paper is not in Barlow's hand. 



132 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. [654 



running up the same in the middle of its channel till it intersects 
the 30th degree of north latitude, thence on a due north line to the 
completion of the 42d degree of North Latitude, thence on a due 
west line to the Pacific Ocean. The navigation of the Rio Bravo 
from the Gulph to the 30th degree will be declared equally free for 
the inhabitants on each side of said River, and the other limits of 
Louisiana are declared to extend so as to comprehend in the cession 
thereof all the territories, by whatever local names they may have 
been called, that on the day of the signature of said Treaty of Saint 
Ildefonso belonged to the Spanish Monarchy in the continent of 
North America to the northward and eastward of the lines and 
limits above described. 

All grants of land made by the Spanish government either before 
or after the date of said Treaty of St. Ildefonso that now remain 
unsurveyed and unlocated are declared to be null and void except 
one grant of six millions of acres made on the day of 

to A. B. his heirs and assigns in fee simple, and another grant of 
fourteen millions of acres to said A. B. and by him transferred to 
the Register of the Treasury of the U States in trust as hereinafter 
mentioned; which two grants shall be valid, and the intention thereof 
executed on the following conditions : 

The grant of six millions of acres is to be laid out, a half a mil- 
lion thereof in east Florida, and the other five millions and a half 
between the Rio Bravo, and the river Sabine, both at the choice of 
A. B. to be surveyed at the expense of A. B. and the warrants for 
the location of the lots are to issue from the Treasury of the U 
States to be signed by the Register. 

The grant of fourteen Millions is to be placed on any vacant land 
between the Mississippi and the Bravo and South of the 33d degree 
of latitude within the limits of Louisiana as above at the choice of 
the Secretary of the Treasury of the U States, to be surveyed at 
the expense of said A. B. in lots of five thousand acres each. 

This latter grant is appropriated to the indemnification of the 
American citizens for the spoliations committed on their property 
contrary to the laws of nations in Spain and France, to be more 
particularly designated in the convention. 

It is conjectured that these spoliations may amount to forty-two 
millions of Francs, lhat is twelve millions in Spain and thirty mil- 
lions in France. The lands being surveyed in tracts of five thousand 
acres and the warrants signed by the Register ready to be deliv- 
ered at the Treasury, are considered as worth three francs an acre, 
and are to be received at that rate in full payment for the spoliations 
by the claimants. 

The United States are to make a loan to the said A. B. of one 



655] 



Appendix. 



133 



million of dollars in a stock bearing interest at six per cent, per 
annum payable quarterly in Washington the principal redeemable in 
ten years. . . . For the security of the repayment of this money, as 
well interest as principal, the warrants for the six Millions of acres 
granted to A. B. shall remain in the Treasury of the U. States to 
be given out by the Register only as fast as the repayment of the 
loan is effected, and that only in the ratio or the rate of forty cents 
an acre. So that a warrant for five thousand acres can be given out 
only on the repayment of two thousand dollars, plus the interest that 
will have accrued thereon. — At which rate the warrants for only two 
millions and a half of acres, out of the six millions, will be delivered 
when the whole loan is reimbursed, at which time all the remainder 
of said warrants shall be given up. 

And to insure the faithful performance of that part of the con- 
tract which regards the survey of the fourteen millions of acres, — 
one fifth of the loan, or two hundred thousand dollars shall remain 
in the Treasury, and the lands shall be surveyed by the surveyors 
of the United States and paid by the Treasury out of the two hun- 
dred thousand dollars thus retained for that purpose, and in case that 
expence of survey should amount to more or less than the two 
hundred thousand dollars the difference can be adjusted by a clause 
in the convention. 

No greater sum than forty two millions of francs shall be found 
due for the spoliations and paid for in this way. And a commission 
shall be established in Paris in the manner to be pointed out by the 
President, to apportion that sum, or as much thereof, as may be 
justly due, among the sufferers. The commission shall decide 
according to equity and the law of nations ; and the rule for esti- 
mating the value to be paid for shall be the prime cost of ship and 
cargo. 

But in case the American Government should prefer not to con- 
firm the grant of fourteen millions of acres, but to keep that portion 
of the land to itself, it shall be at liberty so to do, provided it shall 
pay its own citizens to the full amount of what shall be found due 
not exceeding forty two millions of francs ; and in that case the two 
hundred thousand dollars shall be retained as the just price of the 
survey, which the Government is at liberty to make or not ; and the 
two hundred thousand dollars shall nevertheless be considered as a 
part of the loan to A. B. and repaid accordingly as above stated. 

Madison answered Barlow's letter, February 29, 1812, as 
follows : 



134 



The Napoleonic Exiles in America. 



[6 5 6 



VII. Madison to Barlow. 28 

"I am concerned that the prospect of indemnity for the Rambouil- 
let and other spoliations is so discouraging as to have led to the idea 
of seeking it thro' King Joseph. Were there no other objection 
than the effect on the public mind here, this would be an insuperable 
one. The gratification of the sufferers by the result, would be lost 
in the general feeling ag st the measure. But Joseph is not yet settled 
on the Spanish Throne: when so, de facto, he will be sovereign 
neither de facto, nor de jure, of any Spanish part of this continent; 
the whole of which, if it had not on other accounts a right to sepa- 
rate from the peninsula., would derive it from the usurpation of 
Joseph. So evident is it that he can never be Ks of a Spanish prov- 
ince, either by conquest or consent, that the Independence of all of 
them, is avowedly favored by the policy which rules him. Xor 
would a purchase under Joseph, place us an inch nearer our object. 
He could give us neither right, nor possession; and we should be 
obliged to acquire the latter by means which a grant from him would 
be more likely to embarrass than promote. I hope therefore that 
the F. G 29 will be brought to feel the obligation and the necessity 
of repairing the wrongs., the flagrant wrongs in question, either by 
payments from the treasury or negociable substitutes. Without one 
or other or some fair equivalent there can be neither cordiality nor 
confidence here : nor any restraint from self redress in any justifiable 
mode of effecting it; nor any formal Treaty on any subject. With 
justice on this subject, formal stipulations on others might be com- 

binable 

" Be assured of my affectionate esteem. 

James Madison." 



:i MS. Madison Papers. Department of State, extract. 
89 French Government. 



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